00:09Europe's cities are home to some of the world's best orchestras.
00:13Now four of them are coming together in the celebration of great music making.
00:18In Lisbon, the Gulbenkian Orchestra.
00:21From Cologne, the WDR Symphony Orchestra.
00:24In Helsinki, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
00:28And from Manchester in England, the BBC Philharmonic.
00:32These are the Eurovision classical concerts.
00:54Hello, welcome to the Music Italo in the centre of Helsinki in Finland.
01:00I'm Nicholas Collen. I'm the chief conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
01:04And we're here for a very special concert.
01:07This is our annual celebration of Finnish Independence Day on December the 6th.
01:13Now, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1927 as a very small ensemble of just over 10 musicians.
01:22And it has grown to be now an orchestra of 100 musicians that performs every week online, in the concert
01:29hall here, broadcast live on radio and broadcast nationally on television as well.
01:35We start tonight's programme, the Independence Day programme, with a piece called Ciel Diver by Kaja Sarriaho.
01:43Kaja was one of Finland's most important contemporary composers.
01:48She sadly died in 2023 at the age of 70.
01:52She is well known for her extraordinary use of sound and timbre and atmosphere setting within an orchestra colour.
02:01And this beautiful piece, Ciel Diver, means winter sky.
02:07And, of course, we are celebrating here, not just Finnish independence, but the beauty of the nature that we can
02:14see around us here in Finland at this time of year.
02:17Yeah.
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