A world-famous composer gathers his final, highly anticipated work into a laundry basket, feeds it into the dining room fireplace, and then spends the last thirty years of his life in near-total creative silence. This deep dive into Jean Sibelius explores how a boy who failed at his first dream of becoming a violin virtuoso became the musical voice of a politically oppressed Finland, battled debt and alcohol, and ultimately chose to walk away from his own legacy.

Drawing on biographies, medical histories, and musical analysis, we follow Sibelius from his father's death and the family's financial collapse to his honeymoon in the Kalevala heartland of Karelia, the era of Russification under Nicholas II, and the covert political rally that gave the world Finlandia. We look at the throat tumor surgery of 1908 that darkened his Fourth Symphony,  ...