Wednesday 5 September – Sibelius, synesthesia and squirrels.

Today was Sibelius day.  We walked to the station this morning and boarded the comfortable, quiet and fast train for the 40km journey to Ainola, the family home of Jean Sibelius from 1904 until his death in 1957.  Ainola - “Aino’s place”, in honour of Jean’s wife Aino - was designed by the famous Finnish architect Lars Sonck, a good friend of Sibelius, and the only stipulations were that it was to have a lakefront view and that the large fireplace in the living room was to be green.  When he first saw the completed fireplace Sibelius, who had the neurological condition synesthesia, said that he heard F Major (yellow was D Major and red was C Major – as far as we know colours did not stimulate any minor keys for him).

Jean and Aino raised six daughters at Ainola (losing another child at a young age, perhaps prompting his famous Valse Triste which was, incidentally, John’s dad’s favourite orchestral piece – I still have the 45rpm record that dad bought in the 1950s).  Sibelius wrote the last five of his seven symphonies here, the D Minor violin concerto (which was so difficult in its first iteration that it could not be played) and several symphonic poems and suites.  It is recorded that at one point during his older years he destroyed a great deal of unpublished manuscript, including the much-anticipated 8^th symphony, by burning the papers in the green fireplace.  It is thought that he had become too self-critical as he aged.

Sibelius died from a brain haemorrhage at age ninety-one.  At the moment of his death, Sir Malcolm Sargent, the famed British conductor, was conducting the Sibelius 3^rd symphony at a concert in Helsinki and it was being broadcast on the radio in Ainola as he died.  A fitting passing.

After a guided tour of the house by young Ari, seeing the grand piano built by Steinway for Sibelius in 1910, the desk where he sat to compose his masterpieces and the simple bed where he died, we wandered through the grounds and gardens, viewing the simple grave of Jean and Aino and spotting a tiny squirrel up a tree.  We then walked the two-plus kilometres along a path flanked by fields and flower-gardens to the small town of Jarvanpaan, had some lunch and then caught the train back to Helsinki.  On the way back to our apartment we wandered through Stockmann’s (the Finnish equivalent of Harrods), then after a quick cuppa we were out again for our last walk along the waterfront, stopping to wonder at the statue of the Bad Bad Boy, an eight metres tall pink boy who is constantly passing water (to put it delicately) .  Perhaps the only interesting feature is that the water is kept heated so it doesn’t freeze in winter.