Notes of the Wanderers - the name of the project encompasses several aspects of the reality of the contemporary life as a musician. Any renown musician is an ambassador of own culture, school, methods of teaching. The title encompasses a double meaning as well. Word „notes” refers both to remarks and descriptions of a person travelling around, and, on the other hand, it points out to the notes of melody – the descriptions are put into musical score. The word „wanderers” has a double meaning too. Wanderer is a traveller who is looking for experience, knowledge, wisdom and therefore went on tour. The other meaning comes from the sound of the word – it is a person who is looking for a wonder. Such a wanderer was a very popular personage during the age of Romanticism in Europe. Also now, in the beginning of the 21.century many people want to break through the technocracy of the modern world, are looking for the same ideals as during the age of Romanticism. It is not a coincidence that this project in the present format appears in the year 2011 – the year of Liszt’s 200 years anniversary. His composition „Years of Pilgrimage’ is the key masterpiece of romantic music, and musical encyclopedia of Europe. The festival organizers have taken this composition as leitmotiv, both for the master classes, concerts and the theme of the new commissioned works.

Notes of the Wanderers is a cooperation project between 3 music festivals of 3 European countries: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The aims of this project are fourfold: to improve the level of excellence of the three festivals through exchange of experience and ideas in management of the festivals; to create possibility for creation of new compositions and disseminate them among the participating festivals in the 3 participating countries; to nurture new talents by giving opportunity for the young musicians and music students to grow professionally through encounter with the world-range musicians; to spread interest in cultural heritage of Europe in the realm of classical music.

Inna Davidova