Better Together! Chamber Music Course for Children

On 7 October 2023

The Erich-Schickling-Stiftung hosted a two-day chamber music course for children aged 7 to 12 on a range of instruments for the first time. The course was quickly fully booked with 14 registrations, from which 9 ensembles were formed. Trios with piano and strings, duos with clarinet or violin, and piano duos for four to six hands had rehearsed pieces of their own choosing or suggested by the course tutor with their instrumental teachers in individual lessons.

A Shared Sense of Playing Through Patience and Imagination

On the first day of the course things then became exciting, as the two or three instruments sounded together for the first time and a shared tempo had to be found. The pianist and Stuttgart music school teacher Rose Chen, who recently devised and implemented a pilot project "Primary School with a Musical Focus" in Stuttgart, guided the children towards a shared sense of playing with great sensitivity, patience and imagination. The sense of achievement was already apparent the next morning in the second teaching session. What had still seemed unattainable the day before became possible almost effortlessly. The next challenge was a first run-through of the entire programme in the dress rehearsal. After a special guided tour of the Foundation for the participating children and their families, a small closing concert followed with all the pieces they had rehearsed. The course ended with the presentation of participation certificates with peacock feathers to all participants.

Group photo after the big performance.

Warmest Thanks for This Initiative

The Foundation's chair, Ulrike Meyer, thanked the instrumental teachers for their great commitment in the run-up, and in particular the cooperation with the Ottobeuren music school through Mrs Susanne Jutz-Miltschitzky. The Circle of Friends chair, Michael Trieb, together with his wife Dagmar Trieb and Dr Irene Schweers, had taken on the educational supervision between the course sessions on a voluntary basis. The course was made financially possible by funding from the Bezirk Schwaben and by the Förderkreis der Erich-Schickling-Stiftung e.V.