River and Sea
Sunday Concerts
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Date
- 11:00 / Cancelled 11:00 / Sold out Sunday, 11:00
- 15:00 / Cancelled 15:00 / Sold out Sunday, 15:00
Location
Grand Auditorium Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation- Conductor
- Presenter
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Gulbenkian Orchestra
In 1962, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation decided to establish a permanent orchestral ensemble. Originally with only twelve musicians (strings and continuo) it was named “Orquestra de Câmara Gulbenkian”. This collective was successively enlarged and today the “Orquestra Gulbenkian” (the name it has adopted since 1971) has a permanent body of sixty instrumentalists, a number that can be expanded depending on the repertoire.
This structure allows the Gulbenkian Orchestra to interpret works from the Baroque and Classical periods, a significant part of 19th century orchestral literature and much of the music of the 20th century, including works belonging to the current repertoire of the traditional symphonic orchestras. In each season, the orchestra performs on a regular series of concerts at the Gulbenkian Grand Auditorium in Lisbon, where it has had the opportunity of working together with some of leading names of the world of music (conductors and soloists). It has also performed on numerous locations all over Portugal, in an effort to decentralize music and culture.
The orchestra has been constantly expanding its activities in the international level, performing in Europe, Asia Africa, and the Americas. In the recording field, Orquestra Gulbenkian is associated to labels as Philips, Deutsche Grammophon, Hyperion, Teldec, Erato, Adès, Nimbus, Lyrinx, Naïve and Pentatone, among others, and this activity was recognized with several international prizes.
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Kristian Sallinen
Conductor
Finnish conductor Kristian Sallinen is an exceptional young talent who exhibits a natural authority and charismatic flair on the podium. With significant orchestral debuts as well as numerous returns across the Nordic territory and beyond, he is rapidly gaining international attention.
The 2025/26 season features several notable engagements, including subscription debuts with Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (season-closing concerts), Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Malmö Symfoniorkester and Oulu Sinfonia, as well as Sallinen’s opera debut with Finnish National Opera in Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta. First-time collaborations include Gothenburg Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Gävle Symphony Orchestra as well as his Australian debut with Western Australian Symphony Orchestra, while return appearances – all subscriptions – include RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra and Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Musica.
Highlights of 2024/25 included subscription debuts with Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and Sinfonia Lahti, as well as Norwegian, Swedish, Latvian and Portuguese debuts – again in subscription concerts – with Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, Västerås Sinfonietta, Latvian National Symphony Orchestra and Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Musica. First-time collaborations and national debuts extended to Brussels Philharmonic, Luxembourg Philharmonic and Iceland Symphony orchestras, while Sallinen returned to the UK for his fourth engagement with BBC Symphony Orchestra as well as debut appearances with BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Royal Northern Sinfonia.
From Mozart and Beethoven to Sibelius, Kodály, Stravinsky and Bacewicz, Sallinen’s wide-ranging repertoire also features a strong interest in contemporary music; recent/forthcoming highlights include conducting ‘2024 festival composer’ Jessie Montgomery’s music at the Trondheim Chamber Music Festival as well as world premiere performances of Jouni Hirvelä’s Helsinki Variations (Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, 2024) and Stephen James Webb’s Violin Concerto (Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, 2026). Throughout the 2025/26 season Sallinen champions the music of other contemporary Nordic compatriots such as Magnus Lindberg, Olli Kortekangas and Tebogo Monnakgotla.
Recent and upcoming collaborations with internationally renowned soloists, meanwhile, include Maxim Vengerov, Lawrence Power, Inmo Yang, Senja Rummukainen, Ava Bahari and Anu Komsi, to name a few. In January 2024 the television show “Song of My Life”, featuring Sallinen with Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in concert, was broadcast to 850,000 viewers in Finland, roughly one in six of the country’s population.
Sallinen completed his Orchestral Conducting studies (with Sakari Oramo) at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki in Spring 2025. A former student of Jorma Panula, he has been mentored by Paavo Järvi, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Hannu Lintu, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Susanna Mälkki, among others. His musical studies began at the age of five on the violin, and in 2013 he switched to the viola. A national prize-winner and former member of the Seele String Quartet, Sallinen has performed at festivals across Europe and appeared as a soloist with orchestras including Finnish Radio Symphony.
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Raquel Saraiva
Bassoon
Raquel Saraiva began her bassoon studies in Coimbra with José Pedro Figueiredo. She graduated from ESMAE, where she studied with H. Kesteman and Pedro Silva. She completed her Master’s degree at Lübeck Musikhochschule with Pierre Martens. As part of the Erasmus programme, she attended the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, where she studied with Dag Jensen. She is currently studying for a postgraduate degree at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg with Marco Postinghel.
She has played with various orchestras, including: Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, European Union Youth Orchestra, Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, Bamberg Symphony, Philharmonisches Orchester der Hansestadt Lübeck, NDR Symphony Hamburg, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Munich Radio Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Orchestra, Portuguese Chamber Orchestra and the Gulbenkian Orchestra. She has been an academician of the SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony and a Gulbenkian Foundation grant-holder. She has won awards at the Prémio Jovens Músicos (Young Musicians Award), the 5th International Academic Oboe and Bassoon Competition Łódź and the Estoril National Competition. From 2014 to 2018 she was Soloist B in the orchestra of the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich. She has been 2nd Soloist of the Gulbenkian Orchestra since 2018.
Richard Wagner
The Flying Dutchman: Overture
Claude Debussy
La mer (1st movement)
Bedrich Smetana
The Moldau
Thomas Adès
Shanty – Over the Sea
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
The Sea and Sinbad's Ship (from Scheherazade, op. 35)
Total approximate duration: 60 min. / Concert without intermission
The story goes that, before becoming an admired composer, Claude Debussy dreamed of being a sailor and dedicating his life to a sea that he considered to be infinitely beautiful. It’s no wonder that La mer, one of his most popular works, was inspired by this passion for the sea and its immense suggestive power. The sea, but also the various places to which the imagery of water takes us, are reflected in these musical works by Wagner, Rimsky-Korsakov, Smetana and Adès.
Sponsor Gulbenkian Music
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation reserves the right to collect and keep records of images, sounds and voice for the diffusion and preservation of the memory of its cultural and artistic activity. For further information, please contact us through the Information Request form.
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