Celebrating the National Day of Armenia, 24-rd Anniversary of the Third Armenian Republic.

21 September, 2015

Eminencies, Excelencies
Dear friends,
Ladies and Gentlemen

I would like to thank all our guests - Ambassadors and diplomats, members of the Austrian Parliament, representatives of the Government, Municipality of Vienna, international organizations, Armenian community of Austria for being with us today to celebrate the National Day of Armenia, 24-rd Anniversary of the Third Armenian Republic.
On the 21st of September 1991, the people of Armenia went to polls and made an almost unanimous decision to have an independent and democratic country thus materializing their century-long goals, and dreams. Progress has been made in laying the foundations for an independent statehood, by overcoming the consequences of the devastating earthquake, conflict, war and blockade. Although the security-related issues have always been in the focus of our attention, we have constantly been searching for ways to boost our economy, strengthen democracy, good governance, and the rule of law. It took the toil, industry and perseverance of the people of Armenia, as well as the support and cooperation of the friendly countries, international organizations to address many of these challenges.
Vienna is one of the most important capitals in this regard. Here we fruitfully cooperate with the OSCE, IAEA, UNIDO, UNODC, OFED, CTBTO and other international organizations. Our relations and cooperation with Austria are valuable and dynamic. We are grateful to the Austrian Government for its assistance to Armenia since the time of the Spitak earthquake, for the activities of the Austrian Development Agency in different fields, and recently for the programs for Syrian-Armenian refugees. The recent high level political dialog, visits of the Presidents, Ministers, the opening of the Vienna Armenia Center, and the office of the Austrian Development Agency in Yerevan, new cooperation agreements in the fields of culture, education, agriculture, upcoming intergovernmental commission meeting, will bring new impetus to the friendly relations existing between our two countries.
2015 is a very special year for my nation, and I would like to use this opportunity and to thank the Austrian public, members of the Parliament, City Council of Vienna for their special attitude, for commemorating with us the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, for the special statement regarding the recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide.
And now let me introduce the new age cinematic world music project “Roots of Revival”, which is dedicated to the Centennial of the Genocide, and was already presented last Friday at the Bruckner festival in Linz. I would like to specially thank the sponsors of this project: Bruckner festival, Ministry of Culture of Austria, Municipality of Vienna, Ministry of Culture of Armenia, and the Armenian Embassy.
The author of the project is young and talented composer Vig Zartman, who was graduated from Yerevan State Conservatory, and currently lives and works in Vienna. “Roots of Revival” introduces the rich Armenian musical culture, which reflects the centuries-old history of the Armenian nation, its birth, tragedy and revival. It is a fascinating combination of Armenian folk, spiritual music, refined with cinematic sounds and orchestrated by classical symphonic orchestra, choir and Armenian duduk.
My pleasure is specifically multiplied with the fact that this concert coincides with the National Day of Armenia. Therefore I wish to introduce one of the significant achievement of my country, the young but rather talented and rather famous musicians, who will perform tonight at this prominent stage.
We have already on the stage the State Youth Orchestra of Armenia conducted by Sergey Smbatian. I want to invite to this stage pianist Nare Arghamanian, vocalist Lianna Aleksanian and duduk player Emmanuel Hovhannisian, and the Art-Vocal Choir of Armenia under the conduction of Arno Barkhoudarian.

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