00:00:09Europe's cities are home to some of the world's best orchestras.
00:00:13Now four of them are coming together in the celebration of great music making.
00:00:18In Lisbon, the Gulbenkian Orchestra.
00:00:21From Cologne, the WDR Symphony Orchestra.
00:00:24In Helsinki, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
00:00:28And from Manchester in England, the BBC Philharmonic.
00:00:32These are the Eurovision classical concerts.
00:00:47In this series, I'm going to be your guide on a tour of four outstanding European orchestras,
00:00:53including the one where I'm chief conductor, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
00:01:04But tonight we're visiting Lisbon,
00:01:06and an orchestra which is part of a world-renowned cultural institution,
00:01:11the Kalus Gulbenkian Foundation,
00:01:14which seeks to promote art, knowledge and science,
00:01:18and in the process to help build a fairer, more sustainable and diverse world.
00:01:24It's based in a remarkable modernist complex of buildings,
00:01:28including three museums and a concert hall.
00:01:31The Gulbenkian Orchestra was founded in 1962 as a chamber orchestra,
00:01:36but is now a full-sized symphony orchestra.
00:01:42Tonight's conductor is Aziz Shokakimov.
00:01:45Aziz is from Uzbekistan,
00:01:47where he made his conducting debut with the National Symphony Orchestra at the age of 13.
00:01:52For his debut with the Gulbenkian Orchestra,
00:01:55Aziz opens the concert with Smetana's Vultova,
00:01:58a picture in sound of the river that flows through the Czech Republic and its capital, Prague.
00:02:31Aziz is from Uzbekistan's Vultova,
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