On June 6th, at 7 pm, the final chords of the Vilnius Festival will be heard at the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Hall. The Western musical culture will find its resonance in the interpretations presented by distinguished Eastern musicians. One of the most acclaimed Far Eastern masters of the baton, Zuohuang Chen, will stand at the helm of the South Korean Incheon Philharmonic Orchestra, performing together with young Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan.

Sergey Khachatryan began his professional career after winning first prize at the International Jean Sibelius Competition in Helsinki (2000), becoming the youngest winner in the history of the competition. In 2005, he claimed first prize at the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels. Today Sergey Khachatryan performs at the world’s most prestigious concert halls, appearing with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, London and BBC Philharmonic, NHK Tokyo, Royal Concertgebouw, the French National Symphony Orchestra and Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, among others. Sergey Khachatryan often gives chamber music concerts with his sister pianist Lusine. They have performed at Wigmore Hall (London), Alte Oper (Frankfurt), National Auditorium (Madrid), Carnegie Hall (New York), Théâtre des Champs Elysées (Paris), Palais des Beaux Arts (Brussels) and Concertgebouw (Amsterdam).

Making his debut in Vilnius, the young violin virtuoso will perform Brahms’s Violin Concerto, which he had already performed last year under the direction of Ingo Metzmacher, Gustavo Dudamel, Kurt Masur and Sir Charles Mackerras.

Formed in 1966, the Incheon Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) has contributed much effort to promoting Incheon as an emerging business and cultural hub in Northeast Asia. The IPO has given around 2300 performances. It has played a major role in spreading Incheon’s culture in the US, Europe (Bulgaria, Italy and Yugoslavia) and Asia (Hongkong, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan). It has also given many concerts for Korean audiences in Seoul, Busan and a number of other cities. The IPO regularly organises a wide range of featured concerts and performs for various social groups.

Zuohuang Chen, the current artistic director and conductor, was appointed in 2006. Maestro pursues the ambition to transform the IPO into a world-class orchestra with a wider range and higher quality programmes. Considered the second most celebrated baton master from Far East after Japanese maestro Seiji Ozawa, he studied conducting in Beijing and the United States. He had the honour to be the first person ever to receive the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in orchestral conducting from the University of Michigan in 1985, and become the first Doctor of Musical Arts of the P. R. China. Zuohuang Chen is a much sought-after musician and has been invited to guest conduct more than thirty orchestras in Asia, Europe and the US. Chen was recently appointed the music director of the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing – National Grand Theatre (also known as The Egg).

Along with Brahms’s Violin Concerto, the Incheon Philharmonic Orchestra will perform the Fantasy for orchestra by its compatriot composer Jong-gup Woo (presently known as Shoko Natsuda), a work that demonstrates an interaction between the heritage of Western classical music and Far Eastern musical traditions, and Tchaikovsly’s Fourth Symphony that conveys the image of mankind’s existential struggle for happiness and the fatal power which prevents one from attaining this goal.