From an early age, Sibelius showed a strong interest in nature, frequently walking around the countryside when the family moved to Loviisa on the coast for the summer months. In his own words: "For me, Loviisa represented sun and happiness. Hämeenlinna was where I went to school; Loviisa was freedom." It was in Hämeenlinna, when he was seven, that his aunt Julia was brought in to give him piano lessons on the family's upright instrument, rapping him on the knuckles whenever he played a wrong note. He progressed by improvising on his own, but still learned to read music. He later turned to the violin, which he preferred. He participated in trios with his elder sister Linda on piano, and his younger brother Christian on the cello. (Christian Sibelius was to become an eminent psychiatrist, still remembered for his contributions to modern psychiatry in Finland.) Furthermore, Sibelius often played in quartets with neighboring families, adding to his experience in chamber music. Fragments survive of his early compositions of the period, a trio, a piano quartet and a "Suite in D Minor" for violin and piano. Around 1881, he recorded on paper his short pizzicato piece "Vattendroppar" (Water Drops) for violin and cello, although it might just have been a musical exercise. The first reference he made to himself composing is in a letter from August 1883 in which he writes that he composed a trio and was working on another: "They are rather poor, but it is nice to have something to do on rainy days." In 1881, he started to take violin lessons from the local bandmaster, Gustaf Levander, immediately developing a particularly strong interest in the instrument. Setting his heart on a career as a great violin virtuoso, he soon succeeded in becoming quite an accomplished player, performing David's Concerto in E minor in 1886 and, the following year, the last two movements of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in Helsinki. Despite such success as an instrumentalist, he ultimately chose to become a composer.