Young People´s Concerts | Education programs

For years, Mr. Fellner and KiKo have worked well together. The curious and cheeky concert-goblin KiKo, played by actor Paula Emmerich, meets his good friend, the well read and very understanding conductor Mr. Fellner six times a year.

Together they experience adventures, go on musical world travels, are exposed to natural phenomenons, meet genius composers and immerse themselves in a fairytale world.

Andreas Fellner leads Kiko and the children through the concerts and explains many exciting aspects concerning music and the orchestra.

The Concerts for Children of the Niederrheinische Symphony Orchestra is offered through a subscription for families and has been sold out for years. Therefore, in 2015, they began to offer the same concert twice – these concerts, too, are now regularly sold out and many children in Krefeld and Mönchengladbach grow up with these Concerts for Children.

Since 2014, Andreas Fellner conducts the sensational project of the Cologne Philharmonic Orchestra, ‘Singing with Class’.

Around 300 elementary school children from Cologne, together with the Cologne Gürzenich Orchestra, sing a new piece of music that has been composed specifically for this event.

Each time, actors or singers, and this huge children’s choir tell gripping stories and along the way learn about contemporary music themselves.

The elaborate preparation begins months in advance. Composer, librettist, director, conductor, actors, and the children’s vocal coaches develop and rehearse together this new piece of music. The children, who for the most part have no prior musical education, sing contemporary music and perform together with a big orchestra on the stage of this fantastic concert hall.

On a regular basis, the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra invites Andreas Fellner to conduct their music education projects.

Besides concerts with and for children, he has conducted the Audience-Orchestra in the concert hall on several occasions. Ticket subscribers and audience members of the concert hall in Düsseldorf can apply to perform with the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra as the Audience-Orchestra for one day of the year.

Amateur musicians, who have already orchestra experience sit next to professional musicians and work on great symphonic works.

These are thrilling projects, as they require tact and discretion by the conductor, to merge amateurs and professionals into one new orchestra in only a couple of rehearsals.

In 2016 and 2017, Andreas Fellner was invited to conduct for the WDR Symphony Orchestra and the Beethoven Orchestra of Bonn. In Cologne he conducted a piece by Matthias Kaufmann, which, in a humorous way, brought together children and the WDR Symphony Orchestra on stage. “Kurt Murks and the trash robots” connects in a witty way basic musical terms and demanding orchestral music for a great symphony orchestra.

In Bonn, Andreas Fellner conducted another concert for children. The Beethoven Orchestra had invited him in 2017 to conduct a concert for string orchestra, by which children become acquainted with a vast assortment of string instruments.