The event will last until November 6 and will include 12 concerts in Yerevan, Kapan and Charentsavan.

The Vahagn Stamboltsyan International Organ Festival will be launched on September 26 at the Komitas Chamber Music House with a concert dedicated to the 153rd anniversary of Komitas.

The organ festival will be held on the initiative of the National Chamber Music Center and with the support of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of Armenia. The event will last until November 6 and will include 12 concerts in Yerevan, Kapan and Charentsavan.

As Rosa Grigoryan, responsible for PR at the National Chamber Music Center, told our newspaper, famous foreign organists Fabio Machera (Italy), Evgeny Avramenko (Russia), Jean-Pierre Stuyvers (Netherlands), Lada Labzina (Russia), Emmanuel Arakelyan (France) will take part in the festival.

As part of the festival, organists will also hold master classes. The Armenian organ school will be represented by Anna Bakunts, Karine Hovhannisyan, Harutyun Tagvoryan, Teresa Oskanyan, Oganes Manukyan, Armen Aghajanyan, David Hovhannisyan, Lusine Sarajyan, Lusine Harutyunyan, Vahagn Margaryan and Marina Nahapetyan.

The festival will feature both classical organ works and organ arrangements of Armenian musical gems, as well as organ works written by Armenian authors. The festival program also includes a concert dedicated to Mikael Tariverdiev.

“The organ occupies a special place in the cultural life of Armenia and has its own audience. The Dutch organ “Flentrop” of the Komitas Chamber Music House was installed in 1979 and is a unique instrument of its kind in the territory of the former USSR. Considering the uniqueness of this instrument and the interest of our audience in organ music, the idea arose to organize such a large-scale festival.

By the way, the idea of ​​holding the festival has a history of several years: the pandemic and the war forced us to postpone its implementation a little, but we are glad that this concert season we will be able to present the Vahagn Stamboltsyan International Organ Festival to the public.

By the way, Stamboldtsyan performed at the first organ music concert held at the Chamber Music House,” said the festival’s initiator, Deputy Director of the National Chamber Music Center Armen Sukiasyan. It should be noted that the organ music festival is named after the Armenian organist, founder of the Armenian organ school, People’s Artist of Armenia Vahagn Stamboldtsyan.

Vahagn Stamboldtsyan was born in 1931 in Yerevan. After graduating from the Tchaikovsky Secondary Music School, he continued his education as a pianist at the Yerevan Conservatory (class of Arno Babajanyan), then at the Leningrad Conservatory (under professors Yu. Bryushkov and P. Serebryakov). At the same time, he studied in the organ class of professor I. Braudo.

V. Stamboltsyan began performing solo organ concerts during his student years, and in 1964, after the installation of the first organ in Armenia (in the Chamber Music House), he moved to Yerevan, dedicating his activities to the development and popularization of organ music in Armenia.

A soloist of the Armenian Philharmonic, V. Stamboltsyan often performed in many large cities of the Soviet Union, participated in All-Union festivals of organ music, in the Days of Armenian Culture, held in the Union republics and abroad (Poland, France).

The first organ teacher at the Yerevan Conservatory, he was a famous performer of works by Johann Sebastian Bach, a popularizer of medieval Armenian music, which he performed in his own organ arrangements, and also a performer of music by Soviet composers (Kh. Kushnarev, A. Stepanyan, A. Mnatsakanyan, T. Mansuryan and others.