Lahti

I went back to Finland in late August, 2025, my fourth annual visit, call it a pilgrimage, to the Sibelius Festival that is held every year in the small city of Lahti on Lake Vesijärvi, in South Eastern Finland. My first trip was because of the great composer, Jean Sibelius (1865 – 1957), and his music has certainly brought me back to Finland as I get more and more involved in the great man’s work and his influence on contemporary classical music. Maybe I was always going to love Finland because I loved Sibelius, or was it the other way round, the two are now too intertwined to be unravelled. Both the composer and the country have many layers, but maybe at their heart is a still core that moves me and tells me to focus on the things in our lives that are often unspoken, but undemonstratively who we are. In Finland, I find myself questioning who I am, often silently celebrating the good things but also, searching for what I would like to become. As I am learning too who or what I’m not. Finland, increasingly, feels like my safe place.

When international politics is becoming more and more unstable, and when politics in so may countries has become bad-tempered and divisive, on news bulletins, I see Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb as the voice of reason, and when I visit the country, an apparently efficient working social democracy, Finland feels like a template for how the rest of us should be organising our lives.

Fairhair’s starter shield for two: Lingonberry-cured salmon, tarred Baltic herring, smoked duck, reindeer heart and beaver salami. Potato flatbread from Penttilä farm, sourdough bread, tarred lingonberries, game mousse and smoked perch mousse. Ash cheese from Jumo cheesery, salad with gooseberry vinaigrette, pickled cucumber, carrot chips and oat, tomato-basil salsa, herb- ­marinated beans and toasted pumpkin seeds.

You can have wine, but also, and probably better, either Harald’s strong beer, or mead.

I go once every year.

It was an inspiring time to be young, like Jean Sibelius in the fast developing world of Finnish classical music, and as it must have been for the young artists and architects like , Lars Sonck, who could run free in the brave new arts at the birth of a new nation.

The other windows were designed by the fourth of the young revolutionary artists who worked extensively on the cathedral, the Symbolist painter, Hugo Simberg (1873 – 1917), who based his designs on episodes from the Bible, such as the Holy Spirit descending as a dove at the baptism of Christ, and the Moses’ Burning Bush.

According to the Finnish artist, Jani Ruscica, his sculptural video installation Polynotknot (and they bloom) keeps changing its form, with its clips continuously and randomly shuffled into a new order. Within the imaginative fleshy shapes and masses one can discern a varying number of mouths, eyes and drawings on the skin. Subjectivities dissolve into a polyphonic rejection of linguistic expression and normative conceptions of the body, with the organically folding and piling figures remaining corporeally uncoded.’

The post Going back to Finland 2025 – Part One – From Lahti to Tampere appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

It was like coming home when I looked out of the window of the apartment in Lahti, just as it felt like leaving home when I said goodbye to the cottage in Virtaa, near the little town of Sysmä, after a week’s break in Finnish rural paradise (see previous blog https://wolfiewolfgang.com/away-from-it-all-at-the-centre-of-all-things-in-rural-finland/). I’m a bit like that, I’m afraid. Like the old song, home is where you hang your hat. I’m exaggerating, of course, I have hung my hat in a number of places that I hope I will never have to see again. That was definitely not true of Finland when I went there in September 2023, my second visit. In 2022 I came here for the first time because of the Lahti Sibelius Festival and love it so much, I just had to come again – and again, I will be coming back this year, 2024.

The same apartment, of course, why change things when they work so well. So, yes, it was like coming home to return here to Lahti in southern Finland for another Sibelius festival. September in Finland is a bit like September in the UK – maybe a couple of degrees cooler, but definitely not cold.

I was staying in the modern and wonderfully efficient apartment block complete with sauna, a lift, and excellent sound-proofing. It was a great place to wake up in and, it was even better after a mug of coffee.

I was in the middle of town and Lahti is a small compact kind of town, well it’s a small city, so everything, including the beautiful lake-side Sibelius Hall was within easy walking distance. I have always thought I was a small-town boy, and it is true that I like the feel of being in a town with all the convenience of urban living but where everywhere soon becomes familiar and, yes, homely. I live in just such a town in the UK.

So, I felt perfectly at home and comfortable here – even my socks matched the decor.

I have to confess that I remembered the way the blinds sent a dotted reflection of the sunlight onto the wall above the bed. I thought when I first came here that even the light is design-conscious in this country. I say that I have to confess this because it gives me away, I get great pleasure from the way light falls on walls. It is even better when it plays the same trick a year later.

Another routine that never changes is doing my morning martial arts practice. I was back doing it here in the same recreational space behind the apartments as last year, and it felt as if it had already been consecrated as my dojo. Even better, it was still warm enough in the September sun to wear shorts.

Turn left for the Sibelius Hall and turn right for the city centre – whichever way you go, the streets are lined with green, that particular leaf shade that seems to say enjoy us because this is the beginning of our last shout before autumn.

I turned right because it was time for a leisurely, holiday-mood, second cup of coffee and there are excellent coffee houses, cafés and restaurants here in Lahti, and I had the time to linger.

Statue of two Finnish cavalry soldiers, Hakkapeliitta, from the 30-Year War. by Pentti Papinaho (1974) – those horses look as if they could have won the war on their own.

The Lutheran Church of the Cross (Ristinkirkko) (1978) looks different from each side you look at it, but whichever, it dominates the skyline and shows off the brilliance of its architect, Alvar Aalto (1898 – 1976), who was a brilliant architect in a country of brilliant architects.

The brilliantly white interior comes as a dramatic surprise, but it is both in the spirit of ecclesiastical design, but also of the Modernist Finnish delight in clean lines. The acoustics are clean and clear enough in here for the church to be a concert venue and a music recording studio too for the Lahti Symphony Orchestra. The magnificent, 53-stop, organ was designed by Veikko Virtanen in 1979, and it is so impressive that it has inspired the annual Lahti International Organ Festival.

Spirit of Freedom (Vapauden Hengetäir) 1952 by Wäinö Aaltonen (1894 – 1966)

Down the grassy slope, and/or the many steps, from the church, in a former brewery building, is Lahti’s new, 2022, visual arts gallery MALVA, which on both of my visits here, put on stimulating and forward- looking exhibitions.

In 2022, they were showing a series of shows by the French artists, Adrien M & Claire B – Claire Bardainne (b. 1978) and Adrien Mondot (b. 1979) – with the collective title Havens of Light, which in their description was digital art and the blending of the imaginary, real and virtual dimensions. It was also billed as being interactive….so much so that it even got me to dance for the distortion mirrors.

Their other project was called Crossing the Mirror – a pop-up book in augmented reality and it’s best explained by this short video.

Even the café space joined in the gallery’s art displays with this reproduction of a sixties living room.

Salpausselkä ski stadium, remodelled in 1972, is a weirdly alien object seen from all around Lahti. I thought it was an abandoned road bridge when I first saw it, but then, skiing is not something I have ever done or ever would. Except maybe, if I wanted to commit an elaborate attempt at suicide. Even going to the top of that ski jump would give me heart failure. I am still impressed by the fact that anyone can ski, let alone do the kind of olympic class ski jumping that goes on here in winter. I’m envious because I know I would love to do it, but would never be able to.

If you live in Finland, you have to be tough and you need to be pretty athletic too, especially in the long winters. In front of the ski slope is a sports complex that caters for most sports enthusiasts, including, of course, a football stadium for Lahti FC, a team that has its ups and downs, I’m told, but it is currently in the Finnish Premier League.

Lahti FC produced the player, Jari Litmanen (b. 1971), who is generally regarded as the greatest Finnish footballer ever. His statue ( by Reijo Huttu, 2010) at the club, and celebrates Finland’s all-time leading scorer, its national team captain who also played for Ajax, Barcelona, Liverpool, Malmö as well as Lahti FC. Known as Kuningas (the King) he is an inspiration to all young Finnish footballer wannabes.

The statue may not be great art but it certainly makes its point. As an art-work, I preferred this nearby kiosk with its equally energetic graffiti.

I guess if you have a sporting yearn but you can’t run or ski or kick a ball, you can always be like these. two enthusiastic anglers in the park that leads to the harbour, and then on to Sibelius Hall.

I paid a second visit too to the sculpture park in the woods next to the park to see the colossal concrete sculptures of Olavi Lanu (1925 – 2015) (see my earlier blog) https://wolfiewolfgang.com/flying-to-lahti-in-finland-for-sibelius/

And then, as on every evening during my stay, my destination was the Sibelius Festival at the wonderful Sibeliustalo, Sibelius Hall, built in 2000 over-looking Lake Vesijärvi, and with one of the best acoustics in any concert hall I have visited.

I was here in 2022, https://wolfiewolfgang.com/flying-to-lahti-in-finland-for-sibelius/I returned in 2023 and I plan to go to the 2024 festival too when they will be performing, in their 25th anniversary concerts, all seven of Sibelius’ symphonies. I can’t wait, as they say.

Dalia Stasevska, the festival director and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s principal conductor is seen here at the end of the performance of Sibelius Symphony No. 7 during the last concert of the 2023 festival, one of the many highlights of last year’s event.

Another highlight was the Spanish violinist Maria Dueñas as the soloist in Sibelius’ Violin Concerto, with Festival guests, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra with conductor Daniel Harding. I am already booked to return and, honesty, I am already excited about it.

Let’s finish with a short video made at a recording session in the Sibelius Hall in 2014 with Okko Kamu conducting the Lahti Symphony Orchestra in Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7.

The post Back to Lahti in September 2023 appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

It is early September in 2023, I am sitting in a rocking chair in a cottage, a converted 19th century log house, in a little village called Virtaa, 7.7 kilometres from a small town called Sysmä. The cottage is in the grounds of an old manor house, Virtaan Kartano, owned by Juhani and Tiina Stjernvall. It is a working farm for Juhani and Tiina, but for me, left to my own devices, just here to find peace in the magnificent vastness of the Finnish countryside, it was an oasis – one haunted by the voice of Jean Sibelius (1865 – 1957), whose music, at the annual Sibelius Festival in Lahti, first brought me to this hypnotic country. I spent a week here, before doing south to Lahti for the annual Sibelius Festival and, during most of that time, a piece of Sibelius’ music kept up its persistent call.

Tapiola (1926) is a one movement tone poem for orchestra, loosely about Tapio, the spirit of the forest as found in Finland’s epic creation poem, Kalevala. Sibelius wasn’t usually cooperative about the ‘meaning’ of his work, but his publisher asked him to explain the legend behind Tapiola, and then converted the composer’s reluctant reply into a poem:

Wide-spread they stand, the Northland’s dusky forests,
Ancient, mysterious, brooding savage dreams;
Within them dwells the Forest’s mighty God,
And wood-sprites in the gloom weave magic secrets.

If there is a mighty god in Sibelius’s tone poem, it is an ambiguous one, it probably is more brooding dream than god, but, believe me, if you go walking in Finland’s forests, you will feel the presence of Tapio. I did.

Virtaan Kartano, the farm, is in a typical Finnish landscape of forest and lakes, with the River Tainionvirta leading to Lake Päijänne. This was the first week in September and, therefore, the beginning of the end of the summer season, maybe a few weeks earlier there would have been more people around. The god Tapio may have scared them away, making the place a silent haven – just for me. I doubt it, but that is how if felt. I was under his spell, and could only have left my rocking chair for another chair outside on the porch to sit there all day looking and not looking at the fields and the trees beyond them, and wondering what forces really hide in these forests.

I did move back inside later to have a sauna, the Finnish way, eat some food from Sysmä’s supermarket – like a farmers’ market in terms of quality. A glass of wine and then I’d read some of the Kalevala on my Kindle – then it was back to watching and listening on the next day, and so on.

Juhani, drove past a couple of times on his tractor, and our conversations flowed in an impressively economic Finnish use of friendly monosyllables. Mostly he was occupied in another part of the forest,.

The splendid cockerel and his harem of hens, were a constant clucking murmur, heard like a day-time lullaby from across the yard…

…and of course, there was always an alarm call in the morning.

There were eggs too – warm from the hens, a present from them, via Juhani, for the breakfast table.

From the Sysmä supermarket there was reindeer cheese. It was delicious on hot toast. I didn’t see any reindeer, but knew they were out there somewhere, probably further North, and I send them my thanks.

In case you are wondering, and I didn’t know this, female reindeer, like the males, have antlers, but they keep them through the winter, unlike the males. Don’t ask about Father Christmas’ Rudolph, he is probably a she.

Virtaan Kartano is a wonderful place and, if you want to find out more, here is the link: https://www.virtaankartano.fi/en

There was no problem finding somewhere for my morning martial arts practice here. This must be one of the most tranquil dojos I have ever had for my Chinese-style White Crane Kung-fu. The style I try to learn has moves inspired by the movements of the white cranes still common in China.

I was in the middle of the tai-chi move called the golden cockerel stands on one leg, when an extraordinary sound came from behind me. It wasn’t a Chinese white crane, but a group of Common Cranes, the first I had seen in the wild.

I had never heard their calls before, and I had no idea they could be so loud. I know they can be found in other countries too, but those Finnish cranes were thrilling when they came flying over the forest calling out like instruments in a Sibelius symphony before landing in the field behind me.

This is the land of forests and lakes, a tenth of Finland’s land area is covered by water, and 73.9%, or 66%, but definitely a lot more than half of the land is forested. It really is one of the biggest rural spaces in Europe.

The river here, River Tainionvirta, is rich in salmon, and the furthest river south in Finland for salmon fishing. It was also a bathing spot for the inhabitants of my log cabin.

It wasn’t hot in there, but I’m sure it get a lot colder when the snows arrive. I suspect you can’t have the full experience of Finland without going in for some wild swimming, even better if there is a sauna nearby. It was my first time swimming in a Finnish river, to the fish seemed as interested in watching me as I was watching them. When I say fish, I mean big fish. Honestly. As big as this.

The main activity for me in this inspiring place was just to go walking, breathing in the clean air, listening for crane calls, and watching the occasional jumping fish. I took a lot of photographs and was pleased I had packed my old Canon EOS. For much of each day, I was the typical one man and his camera. Here are some of my shots. They are not exaggerating when they say Finland is the land of forests and lakes.

After a week in this spiritually uplifting place, I could genuinely salute the sun in gratitude every morning before starting my tai-chi, feeling that I had grounded myself here in Finland, set down some roots, literally under my feet, but also, if I dare say this, I felt that I had put down roots into my soul here too. It might have been Tapio, the Finnish god of the forests, he was there in the low-lying sun, it might have been Sibelius, he was always playing in my head, but I think coming here, I was simply opened up to spirit of the Nordic world that opens for us if we imbue its spirit in silence.

Here is Sibelius’ tone poem, played by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, a worthy addition to the cannon of his seven completed symphonies, and a major consolation for the absence of his destroyed eighth symphony. The opening phrase that encircles the whole piece, one way or another, haunted me during my wanderings through the Finnish countryside – and it still does. It is possibly describing what you might find in the forest if you are bold enough to go there. I felt I was getting a glimpse out there of the ‘silence’ of the natural world in the sense that Sibelius meant in his long search to empty classical music down, or, more properly, up, to its profound and ideal of union with that silence. In this music there is beauty, but also fear, and a sense of the inexplicable intercommunication between us as individuals and the great mysteries of the other. It is almost enough to frighten us so much that we daren’t walk into that forest. I’m glad that I did.

The post Away from it all at the centre of all things in rural Finland. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I was in Finland in August and September 2022 and, when I was staying in Helsinki, it was relatively easy to get a train for the 24 mile journey to a place I had read about often and wondered what it would really be like there. I mean Ainola – the home of Jean Sibelius and his wife Aino and their six daughters. Ainola to me was a place of mystery. What could it be like, this place where the great composer wrote most of his profound, majestic and life-affirming music? Like a lot of non-Nordic Sibelius fans, at first I imagined Ainola as a cottage deep in the forests of the great frozen North – the land of the midnight sun, probably up a mountain and decidedly epic. Well, Finland is flat, for a start, but it is a land of forests, but not just spruce trees, in the south of Finland the forest is a mix of deciduous and pine. So I didn’t have to climb a mountain or clamber through thick snow, it was late summer, but I wasn’t disappointed by what I found at Ainola, in a district called Järvenpää, near Lake Tuusula, deep in the wooded land where Jean and Aino Sibelius lived for most of their lives together. It is in a very different place to my long-held but ignorant image, but it is beautiful and it was a moving experience to linger amongst the trees where the great composer walked most days, breathing in the photosynthesis that we can also hear in Sibelius’ symphonies. Yes, I was sitting in Sibelius’ garden.

Young Jean Sibelius, the promising but struggling composer of the Kullervo symphony married Aino Järnefelt, the daughter of a Finnish general, in 1892. Jean Sibelius might have been struggling to make a living, but , believe this or not, he had a wealthy bachelor uncle who died in 1893, leaving his nephew enough money to buy 2.5 acres of land in a place called Järvenpää and to pay an architect to built them a house. In 1904, the young couple, with their growing family of daughters, moved into the new house that was to be called Ainola, meaning Aino’s place. It was to be their home together for the most of the sixty-five years of their, not always easy-going marriage.

The house still stands today and has been kept largely as it was and is now a Sibelius museum and, not just for me, a place of pilgrimage for anyone interested in the composer of some of the 20th century’s greatest music.

Ainola station is decidedly not epic in appearance – it is in a quiet rural location and that means passengers traveling to the Sibelius house, have a country walk down a wooded lane and past cultivated fields.

Today it was hot and sunny, and Finland was showing us that in summer it is capable of being a bee-buzzing, bird-singing paradise garden.

It was a truly special moment to arrive at Ainola on such a perfect day and to be able to walk in Sibelius’ footsteps at a time when, surprisingly, few tourists were around.

This really was where Sibelius walked.

and where the sometimes party-loving, dandified composer liked to entertain his arty friends from what was at that time a budding artists’ community in the countryside around Lake Tuusula.

Life here wasn’t as easy as that photograph implies. The land was stony, not very fertile, and for a lot of the year it was very very cold. It was a very fertile place for writing symphonies though and the composer was more than fortunate that his wife was a strong and determined woman. She was a gardener, she had to be. She cleared whole areas of stoney ground to create the vegetable plot that had to feed her now six growing daughters. The girls were all home-educated and, as a family, they also had to be careful not to be too loud or boisterous, when the great man was at work in his study.

The garden survives with its vegetable plot and it is only fair to state that this really was Aino’s place.

Jean and Aino had their difficult times – it is well-known that the composer was an alcoholic for many years and Aino had bouts of depression stress, needing to go to a sanitarium for a time. Lovers of Sibelius’ 5th Symphony might be surprised to learn that he wrote the piece, one of his most life-affirming, through long nights at Ainola with the help of a bottle of whisky, something he claimed he needed to write his best work. When he was diagnosed with a throat tumour and had successful surgery to remove it, he was advised to give up alcohol which he did for seven years. Aino recalled them as the happiest years of their marriage.

Walking round their house and looking at some of the photographs taken of the two throughout lives together, tells their story and it is true to say that the couple really lived a life here and that their spirit definitely lives on in this extraordinary museum.

‘I am happy that I have been able to live by his side. I feel that I have not lived for nothing. I do not say that it has always been easy – one has had to repress and control one’s own wishes – but I am very happy. I bless my destiny and see it as a gift from heaven. To me my husband’s music is the word of God – its source is noble, and it is wonderful to live close to such a source.’ (Aino Sibelius).

The house has really retained the feeling of being a home and I wasn’t expecting to find myself walking into Sibelius’ sauna. I could almost detect the smell of one of the composer’s cigars.

Jean Sibelius died at Ainola in 1957 at the age of 91, Aino remained at the house until she died in 1969, aged 97. They are buried together in the garden of the house that had been their home for so long.

It was an extraordinarily beautiful day for the trip to Ainola for the Sibelius House but also to see and experience some of the countryside that so inspired him – nothing more so, I suspect, than Lake Tuusula. Sitting here silently by the water as the sun began to sink, I couldn’t help wishing tht a swan would fly overhead or swim across the gleaming water.

‘Today at ten to eleven I saw sixteen swans. One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming silver ribbon. Their call the same woodwind type as that of cranes, but without tremolo……a low-pitched refrain reminiscent of a small child crying. Nature mysticism and life’s angst! The Fifth Symphony’s finale-theme: legato in the trumpets!‘ (Jean Sibelius, Diary entry for 21 April 1915, Ainola). He was talking about the ‘swan call’ in his 5th Symphony.

No swans flew over when I was sitting here – but I can honestly say that I heard Sibelius’ swan calls.

The post Ainola, Finland – Jean and Aino Sibelius’ place. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

In September 2022, after a wonderful time at the Sibelius Festival in Lahti, I stayed on in Finland for another week and moved to Helsinki, a place that everyone I know who has been there to told me that I would love it. I did.

I love the way it manages to be a capital city with all the things that I expect from such places – good facilities, interesting buildings, art galleries, a concert hall or two, good restaurants and places where you can just have fun – it has those things, of course, but it also has the feeling of a small town where you recognise people on the streets, where you won’t be overwhelmed by the infrastructure of city life. Maybe it’s the trams! They remind me of childhood toy railway trains, and Helsinki’s trams, are not only very efficient, but they are pleasant and homely, and they seem to be saying, don’t worry we know where we’re going and we will take you home again afterwards too. The trams have a nice life here, the roads are mostly straight and, like the trams, always seem to know where they are meant to lead us.

With the correct app on my phone, recommended by a helpful man at the tram stop, I soon mastered the way Finns buy tickets and check tram times. It made me realise how stressful public transport can be in other countries, less well organised than Finland. Almost immediately I felt at home.

I liked the buildings too. Finland has a great reputation for architecture, the original or unusual take on even more traditional buildings, like this art nouveau apartment building from 1907, just round the corner from where I was staying. Helsinki seems to reflect a knowledge of tradition but with a willingness to try new ideas – even amazing ideas, like some of the buildings I would see a bit later in my stay. But it was also good to see the recently restored 1891 Gothic Revival Johanneksenkirkko (St John’s Church), the largest Lutheran church in Finland, which also doubles up as a concert venue.

The organ was installed in 1892 but extended by the church’s first organist, the Finnish composer Oscar Merikanto, he maybe little known today outside of Finland, but he was the composer of a piano piece, Valse Lente, I used to play when I was a child, too young to know more than seeing the name Oscar Merikanto on my sheet music. Finding that he was organist here at this church, made Helsinki seem even more homely to me. Here is the Finnish pianist Janne Oksanen playing it, I am sure, a lot better that my schoolboy self did – but I remember enjoying showing off with that final flourish when I had to play it in a school concert.

The painting above the altar is A Divine Revelation, the Conversion of Paul the Apostle by Eero Järnefelt, 1932, the Finnish artist who was also composer Sibelius’ brother-in-law.

He painted a portrait of his friend and brother-in-law in 1892. He lived in the artists’ colony around Lake Tuusula, near the Sibelius family. I planned to go out towards Lake Tuusula during my stay, especially to find Sibelius’ House, Ainola, some 38 kilometres north of Helsinki. I wanted to see the quasi-mystical land where the grreat Sibelius found inspiration.

My apartment was not far from the centre of Helsinki, behind these imposing security doors with a handy electric scooter waiting outside.

Through the main doors there was a courtyard and a bicycle park, trams, bicycles and electric scooters appear to be the principal forms of transport in Helsinki.

Upstairs I found the apartment was modern and white like the apartment in Lahti and just as comfortable, with its own sauna too.

I enjoyed the civilised urban environment here in the Ullanlina district of Helsinki, a wealthy middle class district in the 19th Century, with its mainly Jugendstil, art nouveau, architectural style. It is close to the city centre but also to the waterfront.

While I was in Finland, my home country, the UK, kept creeping onto the news. On the 5th September, the television news told us that the British Prime Minister had been forced to resign over his less that serious handling of the Covid lockdown regulations. On the 6th September, the Finnish news told us that Liz Truss had just been appointed the new British Prime Minister. And two days later, on the 8th September, I was watching the regular evening news when I heard about the death of the British Queen, Elizabeth II. Even here, a long way away from the UK, the Queen was the main news of the day. It was a strange experience being a Brit abroad that week when Britain had two prime ministers and two monarchs. In conversations across Helsinki, I was obliged to hear about the sadness most Finns felt about the UK leaving the EU, then I had to agree with the jokes that were told about our apparently clueless politicians and then, finally, I was given heart-felt condolences from more than a few people who held the Queen in high regard. It was a common reaction during this holiday, that it appeared as if the UK was fracturing before our eyes.

The TV news told us ‘Queen Elizabeth II is dead’.

The UK’s troubles kept coming up on this holiday, but I tried to distance myself from the turmoil and, instead, headed down the street to Helsinki’s waterfront which was resplendent in the early September sunshine.

This star pattern on the pavement became the site of my daily kungfu and tai-chi practice – an ideal spot to do tai-chi by the water.

This, my temporary do-jo had a handy coffee kiosk too, so every morning, after tai-chi, there was always a welcoming breakfast of coffee and croissants.

Helsinki sparrows were either trying to be friendly or they wanted to steal my croissant – they didn’t go hungry, but I got the lion’s share.

I was also just a tram journey away from the city centre, a daily journey to enjoy some of the attractions.

Helsinki’s art nouveau Central Station (Helsingin päärautatieasema) and clocktower was built of granite in 1919, designed by Eliel Saarinen (1873 – 1950) and its famous Lantern Bearers statues, (Lyhdynkantajat) were the work of Emil Wikström (1864 – 1942).

The Stockman Department Store, not far from the station, also has an art nouveau facade but a Nordic Art Deco interior – it was opened in the centre of Helsinki in 1930 and it remains a palace for high-end shopping in a Europe where the department store is mostly losing its gloss.

The original architects, the brothers, Valter and Ivar Thomé were killed in the Finnish Civil War between the Reds and the Whites in 1918. They were shot by the Reds in 1918 trying to cross to the White side of the line. A tragic fate for two of Finlands most talented architects.

Outside Stockman is the Three Smiths Statue (Kolmen sepän patsas) (1932) by Felix Nylund – the three naked smiths are hammering an anvil in an apparent celebration of labour with the figures modelled by wrestlers from Helsinki’s Jyry Gymnastics and Sports Club.

A modern ‘lighthouse’ street clock in central Helsinki makes a splendid vista against the jigsaw domed roof in front…I was constantly delighted by Finnish design.

Amazing as much of the design in the central city was, nothing quite prepared me for the beauty of the Kamppi Chapel (Kampin kappeli) – the Chapel of Silence in Narinkka Square – it has become one of my very favourite buildings.

People are encouraged to come into the chapel to find peace and to remain silent here in the middle of the bustling city centre. The interior would have made me speechless even without the silence warning. Heavenly.

I made my way, of course, to the Modernist home of The Finnish National Opera and Ballet, armed with tickets for their new production of Wagner’s opera Die Walküre, the second instalment of a planned complete cycle of his epic operatic tetralogy, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung or, in Finnish, Nibelungin sormus).

Finland’s national opera company had to make do without a home for 120 years, mostly with touring opera companies supplying the repertoire, but, in 1993, this wonderful new building was opened, the work of architects Eero Hyvämäki, Jukka Karhunen and Risto Parkkinen, on Töölönlahti Bay with state-of-the-art technology and seating for 1350, as well as a studio theatre that seats up to 500.

As with other cultural institutions, like the Lahti Sinfonia and many other music and arts events in Finland, the government, with popular support, sees culture and education as one and the same thing, and they put their money where their mouth is. And, surprise, surprise, the result is not only superb architecture, but great art to put into it. It is now beyond surprising to read about innovative Finnish architecture and design, but also to find out that all around the world there are orchestras with Finnish principal conductors, and Finnish musicians and composers proving that blossoming talent and money are interconnected when a nation takes culture seriously.

No surprises either then that Finnish National Opera has now got an international reputation for excellence and no surprise either, that their new production of Die Walküre was a must-have ticket for anyone interested in opera in general and Wagner in particular. You can count me in on both of those.

I was thrilled to be there for this opening production of the second opera in their Ring cycle in yet another Finnish acoustic that did the musicians proud.

It was a sell-out, of course. I had booked early on the first day of ticket sales, on an excellent, fault-free online booking system that gave me a second-by-second account of where I stood in the queue. It was actually an exciting experience in itself to see the house getting sold-out on the day. Finnish National Opera, I decided, had definitely arrived and the world should listen. Here’s the on-line promo…..it gives you a taste of what was their fantastic but also edgy new production – with world-class singing and orchestral playing under the dynamic Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu, with a ringing-voiced Joachim Bäckström as Siegmund, a lyrical Miina-Liisa Värelä as Sieglinde, a thunderous Matti Turunen as bear of a Hunding, and large-voiced magnificence from a bravely punk Johanna Rusanen as Brunnhilde and a charismatic Wotan from Tommi Hakala – with a troupe of punkish Valkyrie maidens to die for. So many terrific Finnish singers along with the German star, Joachim Bäckström.

After Wagner, a tranquil walk by the water back near my temporary home looking over the Baltic Sea, in the part of the world where Wagnerian epics were almost certainly born.

I was perfectly content to watch the sun set over the harbour and to listen to the evocative sound of riggings rattling masts in the sea air.

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My first sighting of Finland, land of lakes, forests, saunas and music, seen from the air on a scheduled flight to Helsinki.

It all started six months earlier, in the Runaway Cafe on platform two at Lewes Station, UK, my home town. I am not talking about my journey to catch the plane to Finland. It was March 2022, I was having a coffee before the London train arrived and the radio behind the counter was playing Sibelius’ most well-known piece, Finlandia. I was going to London for a day at the British Museum for The Stonehenge exhibition, which I truly enjoyed. The only trouble was that tune. I could not get rid of Finlandia all day.

In all honesty, I was wishing I could hear the whole piece on my home sound system and I didn’t want to wait until I got back, but I had to. Of course, being an obsessive kind of man, it wasn’t good enough just to listen to Finlandia, love it though I do, especially as played by an orchestra called The Lahti Symphony Orchestra (Sinfonia Lahti), conducted by Osmo Vänskä. No, I decided that I had to listen to all seven of Sibelius’ symphonies again, in numerical order, of course. It had to be the versions by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra too. If you don’t know these recordings, please find them somewhere, they are truly inspiring and, I thought, without any proof or even any knowledge what that actually means, they are very Finnish.

I hadn’t given the orchestra’s name a lot of thought, but it had occurred to me that Lahti was a strange sort of word and, of course, I couldn’t speak Finnish. I didn’t know what a Lahti was, maybe a type of milky coffee, or who Lahti was, or where Lahti was. So, with Sibelius fully enthroned in his rightful place back in my brain, I decided to google Lahti. Ah, yes, it’s a relatively small town in Finland which has its own symphony orchestra, famous for its recordings of Sibelius’ music. They had a state of the art orchestral hall too, by a lake, The Sibelius Hall, which, I now read, had first class, world class, acoustics. And then the big moment. Drum-roll, please Lahti Symphony Orchestra: every year Lahti holds a Sibelius Festival with its resident orchestra, in the Sibelius Hall and playing only Sibelius’ music.

So there I was, heading North, sitting on a Norwegian Airways flight from London Gatwick to Helsinki Airport at the end of August 2022. It was my first visit to any of the Nordic countries and, for someone who had been going on holiday every year to Italy, this was definitely going to be something different.

Helsinki from the air and, beyond it, the Baltic Sea.

This is the impressive modern building that is the Sibelius Hall in Lahti. I was truly excited to get here, but I was knocked out by the architecture and its setting.

The Lahti Symphony Orchestra (Lahti Sinfonia) with its principal conductor Dalia Stasevska, who is also the festival director, gave three concerts of Sibelius’ music. His Symphonies Nos. 4 and 7 and the great late work, Tapiola, a tone poem that some people call his 8th symphony. There were also a number of the composer’s other tone poems and two rare performances of his music for narrator and orchestra, The Wood-Nymph and Snöfrid.

The Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska is already known for her passionate, dramatic and rhythmically exciting interpretations of a whole range of composers’ works – including many contemporary Finnish composers. As well as being the Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor, from 2021 until 2025, her first principal conductor’s post, she is also the principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra where she became better known to British audiences after she conducted the Last Night of The Proms in 2020.

Now she is even on the cover. of this month’s Gramophone Magazine (April 2024), and it is, by now, patently obvious that she will soon be taking a giant, and well-deserved, leap into the top ranks of international conductors.

I will remember particularly her emotional commitment and her ability to transmit that feeling to us in the audience, especially in profoundly serious performances of Sibelius’ great twin other-worldly masterpieces, Symphony No 7 and Tapiola. Look carefully, if you can be bothered, I am sitting, transfixed, four rows back, on the left, feeling privileged and moved to have been there.

The opening concert of the festival was impressive too, with the Estonian Festival Orchestra conducted by the Estonian-American conductor, Paavo Järvi, the orchestra’s chief conductor and founder, but also chief conductor of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo. They played Sibelius’ thrillingly late Romantic Symphony No. 2 and his dramatic quasi-symphony, Lemminkäinen, setting some episodes from the life of Lemminkäinen, the reckless, flawed and deeply human hero from Finland’s national epic, the Kalevala, with its mystical Isle of the Dead guarded by the black swan of Tuonela.

 Lemminkäinen : Thus became a mighty hero. In his veins the blood of ages, 
Read erect and form commanding, Growth of mind and body perfect 
But alas! he had his failings, Bad indeed his heart and morals, 
Roaming in unworthy places, Staying days and nights in sequences 
At the homes of merry maidens, At the dances of the virgins, 
With the maids of braided tresses (Rune IX, The Kalevala)

During the intervals to the concerts, the audience retreated to enjoy the appropriately inspiring architecture of the Sibelius Hall (Sibeliustalo), completed in 2000, it is the work of Finnish architects, Kimmo Lintula and Hannu Tikka, continuing what is by now Finland’s international reputation for great architecture.

The concert hall’s acoustics are, as I had read, as good as you get, and its pin-drop clarity encouraged the audience to sit silently and it also allowed the orchestras to play to their full range – from fortissimo to pianissimo with no loss of detail. In the interval, we could also catch those famous Finnish sunsets over the lake. I know that Sibelius is much more than just a Finnish composer, he’s one of the greatest masters of music, and his works are not really ‘about’ Finland, but the Sibelius Hall in this setting, after some great performances of his music, can’t help but remind us that his inspiration wherever it came from, can’t have been unaffected by the Nordic beauty of his homeland.

Up these intriguing musical stairs, on the other side of town, is the Lahti Conservatory of Music, (Lahden konservatorio), where there was also a piano recital given as part of the festival and, this year, focusing on Sibelius’ less well-known genre, piano music.

The young Danish pianist, David Munk-Nielsen (born 1998), still studying for his master’s degree at Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy, and was already an award-winning pianist He won first prize in the Tampere Piano Competition as well as the Tallinn Piano Competition – and in both competitions he played Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto, not for the faint-hearted, in the finals. In his Lahti Sibelius recital, he played three sets of piano pieces from the beginning and the towards the end of the composer’s creative life. Ten Pieces, Op 24, are examples of Sibelius’ early, Liszt-inspired virtuoso works; Five Pieces, Op. 75, The Trees, and Five Pieces, Op. 85, The Flowers, are sets of often gnomic miniatures, each title the name of a tree or a flower, and the music is, well this is Sibelius, a lot more interesting than their names suggest. David Munk-Nielsen played them with the seriousness they deserve and, where necessary, the virtuosity that says much for his future.

You have to take trees seriously in Finland, it is the most forested country in Europe, the great northern forest. A small piece of this forest, in southern Finland they are a mix of deciduous and evergreen, spreads down almost as far as the Sibelius Hall in Lahti in what is called Kariniemi Park, which also contains the Lanu Sculpture Park, featuring the work of Finnish sculptor Olavi Lanu (1925 – 2015), who took trees seriously too. His works are often made in concrete but disguised as if they are growing in the forest – which in Kariniemi Park, they are, if you see what I mean.

Walking in the park, I felt that I had a real if small-scale taste of what that the Finnish forest, further north, is truly like. A desire was born to explore further into Finland’s natural landscape while I walking down wooded paths to the equally Finnish landscape of lakes.

Also bordering onto trees in the centre of Lahti is the Lahti Museum of Visual Arts Malva – mostly known simply as Marva. It was obvious from my first visit that the people who run it have just the right attitude to the modern and the historic and that they have very good taste too. Their main exhibition, when I was there, was by the Dutch conceptual artist, Maarten Baas.

Dutch artist, Maarten Baas’ exhibition, Hide and Seek, was full of surprises, jokes and insights into what we sometimes call, wrongly, the everyday.

Maarten Baas does some amazing things with smoke and mirrors too. His burnt objects, many of them of iconic pieces, was truly dramatic and not a little disturbing….I can still smell the burning.

Lahti is not just a place for great music and art, forested walks and lakes, it is also, yes, a nice town. I suspect it is also a very Finnish town – orderly, organised, efficient and modern – an extremely pleasant place. I like its understated charm a lot. Finland feels like a modern place to me, and I really like the way that the oldest buildings in Lahti all seem to be 20th century. It feels like Lahti lives in the present and the future – that gives me hope. It is also a great place for a coffee or a drink in civilised surroundings.

Lahti’s main church, the Church of the Cross (Ristinkirkkko), was built in 1978. Another piece of fine modern architecture. Today, it was holding a wedding. So simple but so effective this display of sunflowers – no happy couple could help. but me moved by its simple but profund statement of hope and good wishes. The church, by the way, has been the location for a lot of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s highly-regarded Sibelius recordings.

Home for this week, was a modern apartment in a modern apartment block, in a modern apartment estate, right in the middle of town and a short walk from Sibelius Hall.

I know that the Finnish winter is harsh but the Finns are ready for that. They are natural designers. The doors fit, the locks lock with a delightful clunk, they stay shut too in a gale. Here, in my temporary home, the obsessive in me loved the way everything worked and looked smart as well as functional. This lift, for example, nicely lit, smoothly opening and closing doors and a purring swish gave me great pleasure every time I used it.

A lot of Lahti citizens live in these type of developments and, unlike many other apartment blocks I’ve seen in other countries, here I think , you are lucky citizens to live here.

There was even a place for me at the back, in that nicely designed communal garden, so I began each day, as I try to wherever I go, doing my kungfu and tai-chi practice – overlooked by some curious residents who only registered their surprise with a slight flicker of a smile and a friendly Hei.

After tai-chi, what better, most Finns would agree, than a hot sauna back in the apartment. Sauna is the only Finnish word to enter the international vocabulary. It means, yes, sauna and it is genuinely a part of every day life in Finland. You feel great afterwards, believe me.

Down the street, turn right and five minutes away is another world. Well, as you can see below, a themed restaurant that isn’t into the idea of hiding its ideas. Viking Restaurant Harald (Viikinkinkiravintola Harald) is just what it says the moment you see it. At first I was reluctant to go in. I suspected it would be all embarrassing theme park entertainment with terrible theme park food, but I was wrong. The decor has a sense of humour. I know that Vikings were not exactly what the comic books portray. My father’s family came from the Scottish Hebrides and some of our ancestors have Viking names, so I am a softy for my Viking heritage, even if I do know for a fact that Viking never wore two-horned helmets, and I certainly never thought I would wear one, but….

…never say never. When in Lahti’s Viikinkinkiravintola Harald, after a few Viking beers, and a very good meal (honestly, the food is first class), almost anything can happen. But, before I go, let me leave you with members of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, who have given me so much pleasure here in Lahti. They are performing their Covid lockdown version of Sibelius’ Finlandia, each musician in his or her own home studio. Kiitos ja kippis! I shall be back!

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I have two new Fibonacci poems published today in the splendid Fibonacci specialist journal, The Fib Review. It’s always a challenge to try to squeeze big things into little boxes but I had a go when I picked the great, melancholy and alcoholic Finish composer Jean Sibelius as the subject of one of these miniature syllable-count poems that are based on the so-called Fibonacci Code with the sequence of numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 etc. In the second poem, I try to take us back to our common ancestry in Africa.

Here’s the link – there are a lot of other Fibs there too – well worth you reading.

http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/colin_bell1.html

If you have never heard Sibelius’ music, take a listen to this, the finale from his 5th Symphony. It is thrilling – you might even hear those swans flying.

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The Times ran an article yesterday that might have seemed dull to some but was pure delight to a classical music geek like me. They asked nine different writers to name their favourite numbered symphony – each writer having just one number.  Nine, of course, is the magic symphonic numeral after Beethoven’s monumental canon of symphonies. Schubert wrote nine too – or eight and a half if you feel his Unfinished sounds, well, unfinished. Mahler, neurotic in most things was positively frenzied over the thought that he would die, like Beethoven, after finishing his 9th so he called his real 9th, The Song Of The Earth, a song cycle and then wrote what we call his 9th and, well naturally, he died before finishing his 10th – just like Ludwig Van.

Well, I can’t resist a musical game so I had a go myself and toughened up the rules by saying that you can only have a composer once in your list of nine symphonies. Inevitably things had to go mostly because the greatest symphony composers wrote a lot more than one great symphony and, also, Haydn and Mozart  didn’t get going until they got to double figures but hey, it is only a game.

So here it is, my list of nine symphonies I would never want to live without allowing for the fact that there are a whole lot more out there  as well:

1)  Walton – Symphony No. 1 in B flat minor, Op 11

2)   Elgar – Symphony No. 2 in E flat, Op 63

3)   Beethoven – Symphony No. 3 in E flat Op 55 (Eroica)

4)   Brahms –  Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op 98

5)   Sibelius – Symphony No. 5 in E flat, Op 82

6)   Tchaikovsky – Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op 74 (Pathetique)

7)  Shostakovich – Symphony No. 7 in C, Op 60 (Leningrad)

8)   Schubert – Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D.759 (Unfinished)

9)   Mahler – Symphony No. 9 in D minor

Now it’s your turn – send me your list and we can compare, er, notes.

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