Donatas Katkus (b. 1942), a viola player, conductor, teacher, musicologist, music critic and manager, has been one of the most prominent stage personas in Lithuania for the last five decades. From the very beginning of his career, he has expressed himself as an erudite visionary, and a propagator of new music. In 1965, together with like-minded peers, he formed the Vilnius Quartet, in which he played the viola for three decades, and initiated several dozen new compositions by Lithuanian composers. Katkus has advised composers, and has been their inspirer and evaluator; on some occasions, he was a clever defender against the rebukes of Soviet ideologists. In 1995, he established the Vilnius City Municipality St Christopher Chamber Orchestra, which he ran until 2018. The orchestra stands out with its stylistic versatility. According to musicologists, the St Christopher Chamber Orchestra, which has acquired a reputation as a Baroque orchestra and a reviver of rare scores, is also ‘a great basis for all ideas by Lithuanian composers’.  Its repertoire currently comprises opuses by over 30 composers, from ancient music to pieces written by students at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. The orchestra has performed almost all the works for strings by F. Bajoras, B. Kutavičius, and O. Balakauskas, and is equally interested in contemporary music by foreign composers, such as Peter Vasks, Erkki-Sven Tüür, John McCabe and Robert Sierra. It has performed with singers such as Kerstin Avemo (soprano), Charles Castronovo (tenor) and Violeta Urmana (soprano), the violinist Maksim Vengerov, the pianists Maria João Pires, Konstantin Lifschitz, Tamami Honma, Petras Geniušas and Julian Joseph, the cellists David Geringas and Dominique de Williencourt, the flautist Camilla Hoitenga, and others.

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