The controller of Radio 3 thinks that Mozart’s music is too “chocolate-boxy” to sustain the marathon treatment that his network bestowed on Beethoven and Bach. Yet the BBC managed a reasonable display of reverence on Friday, the 250th anniversary of Herr Chocolate Box’s birth. Four concerts, all broadcast live, might not add up to a chocaholic glut. But each illuminated a different facet of Mozart’s genius. At the end of this feast I could only think that the Radio 3 controller must have seen some deeply profound chocolate boxes in his life.

I caught two concerts in the flesh. The lunchtime recital at LSO St Luke’s by the Skampa Quartet was fascinating, if not always for the best reasons. In their 15 years at the top, the Czechs have been rightly acclaimed for their intelligence and energy. But they have never been a very opulent-toned ensemble, and in the “Prussian” Quartet, K589, the bows were so lightly applied, and the mood so diffident, that the music’s surface seemed unruffled. It was a reminder of how difficult it is to capture the quintessence of Mozart, even when the notes look straightforward.

In the “Dissonance” Quartet, however, they were far more compelling. They didn’t make a big tragic thing of the famous opening. Instead their most startling stroke was saved for the slow movement, where they suddenly cut the sound to an eerie whisper, as if glimpsing something bleak and wintry on the far horizon.

If such music seems to open a window on Mozart’s inner life, the evening concert — by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under David Robertson — offered two of the composer’s grandest and most overtly public compositions: the Jupiter Symphony and the Mass in C minor The former got an eminently competent, and eminently forgettable, reading. The latter was a different matter. This mass may be unfinished, but it is conceived on a grand scale, and here it received a truly celebratory performance. The chorus was in superb form, not just blazing through big moments like the eruptive start of the Gloria, but also delineating the masterly counterpoint with impeccable clarity. With such a responsive choir at his fingertips, Robertson could be forgiven the odd garish dynamic shading.

Just as fine, and just as vital in this work, were the two soprano soloists, Laura Aikin and Emma Bell — chalk and cheese in tonal quality, but each equal to the fearsome coloratura runs that Mozart wrote, apparently as a wedding present for his new wife to sing. What, no box of chocolates?