More than 1,500 voices of children could be heard on Saturday in the National Opera square in Chisinau, where there is celebrated the Choir Festival, Info-Prim Neo reports. The fourth festival organized by the Chisinau General Division of Education, Youth and Sports is themed “My Moldova, Today and Tomorrow”. Dressed in similar clothes with multicolor balloons and flags, the children marched accompanied by the orchestra of the Ministry of the Interior from the Chisinau City Hall to the National Opera square, where they joined their voices in a large choir under the applauses of the parents, teachers and spectators. “It is a nice, lively holiday, a good tradition that we hope to continue in the future,” the head of the Chisinau General Division of Education Tatiana Nagnibeda-Tverdohleb has told Info-Prim Neo. Thirty-six children’s choirs from 18 Chisinau education institutions are participating in the festival. All the children are from artistic classes. The choir of the theoretical high school of Recea village in Rascani district was also invited to the event. Tatiana Nagnibeda-Tverdohleb has recently returned from the Estonian capital of Tallinn, where the Singing Plain festival brings together choirs consisting of up to 300,000 children and adults once in five years. “We hold the festival once in two years and this gladdens us. Maybe we will also have so many participants in the future as the people’s traditions are strengthened through song and cultural activity,” Tatiana Nagnibeda-Tverdohleb said. Next year, the Division will hold a contest titled “Holiday of Music”, while in 2011 – the fifth edition of the festival. The idea and initiative of holding the festival belongs to conductor and composer Victor Creanga, artistic manager of the choir “Sonata” of Nicolae Iorga high school. He is the author of the festival’s emblem and anthem. “When I was a student at the Conservatory in 1965, I had the possibility of seeing the choral field in Tallinn and then I decided I will make everything possible to bring this festival to Moldova. In our country, it is held once in two years,” Victor Creanga said. Once, the conductor staged such an event at the Green Theater, bringing together 2,000 adult singers from all over the country. Now he dreams of restoring that stage so that the children could sing there. “It is the golden corner of Chisinau. The children there would hear no noise, only their own voices.” Victor Creanga is convinced that it was the choral art that edified the people from the three Baltic countries and it is the perfect instrument in esthetic education. As many as 2,200 children from Moldova, Romania and Russia took part in the Choir Festival in 2007.