MUSIK AND MOVEMENT FOR THE LITTLE ONES
The Evangelical pre-school in Berlin’s Ottostrasse is located right in the middle of the socially diverse quarter Moabit. The children come from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds and, for the most part, from socially disadvantaged families.

Through movement games and elementary music-making, children aged three to four years were introduced to basic musical structures and musical parameters. Three groups of eight children each attended workshops during a two month period. Then, at the end of the pre-school year, they visited an RSB rehearsal where they heard Johann Strauss’ overture “Die Fledermaus” and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” overture.

STRANGE CHARACTERS – SINFONIA DOMESTICA
Once again, classes at the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Oberschule in Berlin-Friedrichshain undertook a project on improvisation and composition. This time, the theme was Richard Strauss’ Sinfonia Domestica. Seventh grade students developed improvisations based on motifs and content from the Sinfonia Domestica, with the support of students from the advance music course.

In the style of Strauss’ musical family portrait, students characterized a member of their own family in a tone drawing under the title “Strange Characters”. In preparation, they made painted portraits of the strange characters.

Four RSB musicians came to the school for two workshops and helped students to solidify their musical ideas and organize them in an ensemble. The results were presented to a large parental audience at the school. The project was completed with a visit to an RSB concert at the Philharmonie.

MAHLER AND STRAUSS FOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS
Five classes at the Berlin International School visited rehearsals of the RSB after orchestra musicians came to the school to prepare students. In the first part of a two-part workshop, students investigated the questions “What is a symphony orchestra?” and “How does it work?” with reaction and tone games. In the second part, students were introduced to aspects of Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony and Richard Strauss’ Sinfonia Domestica in improvisational games.

NATURE SET TO MUSIC – BEETHOVEN’S PASTORALE
RSB musicians visited a class of students in grades one to three and introduced them to orchestra play through musical games, before the students undertook their own musical experiments on the theme of “Nature Set to Music”. The next day, the class visited a rehearsal of the RSB at the Haus des Rundfunks on Masurenallee and heard the orchestra play Ludwig van Beethoven’s Third Symphony “Pastorale”.

DREAM SOUND FANTASY – MUSICAL DISCOVERY OF BERLIOZ
The school’s music teacher encouraged her 7th grade and advanced music students (12th and 13th grades) to create compositions and improvisations based on themes from Hector Berlioz’ “Symphonie Fantastique”. In two workshops, four RSB musicians worked with the children to further develop their compositions, and played music together with the kids. The musical ideas and fantasies inspired by Berlioz were compiled into a larger piece, which was later performed at the Berlin Konzerthaus.

Playing Music – Inventing Music
During a project week students of 3rd and 4th grade belonging to different cultures learned in a practical manner, while improvising and playing music, what it is like to play in an orchestra.
The different parts of the workshops were: “What is music?”, “What is music able to do?”, “What is music made of?”, “Practise of hearing”, “Music can talk”, “We are inventing our music”.
The project prepared the kids as well for a rehearsal-visit of the RSB. The students met the composer Georg Katzer and were able to ask him questions. Finally the kids created their own composition and performed it in the course of the final presentation at the end of the project week in their school.

Mentoring
The cooperation with the Lenau Schule continued with a mentoring by a musician who came to see the students of 3rd and 6th grade to improvise and to play music.

BODY PERCUSSION – RHYTHMIC APPROACH TO MOZART
Before the 6th grade class of the Schliemann-Oberschule visited an RSB rehearsal in the Haus des Rundfunks, students participated in a Mozart workshop with four RSB musicians from the RSB, who led the students through Mozart’s Flute Quartet in D major. During each movement, students were called upon to join in the music, for example with body percussion. Students were played an alternative passage of the third movement that Mozart had removed from the final work, and they were asked to decide which the better version was.

NUTRITION – MOZART – KITCHEN MUSIC
A farm, a health insurance company, classical musicians and two school classes together at a trade fair for food – that seems to be as unlikely a combination as a hippopotamus and a Burgundy snail in the Sahara. And yet, this was part of a music pedagogy project – albeit a fairly exotic one. Together with the project agency of the instructional farm Domäne Dahlem, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin RSB developed the project entitled “Nutrition – Movement – Music”, which was presented at the 2007 International Green Week agricultural trade fair in Berlin. While four RSB musicians played a rondo theme by Mozart, students performed a choreography of body percussion and movement that was superimposed with words referring to healthy nutrition, and which was finally transformed into “kitchen music” using utensils from the instructional kitchen.

SCHOOL CONCERTS
What was initially planned as an individual project for one school class developed into a series of school concerts:
In a first presentation in the gym of the Konrad-Aghad School, over 200 students were introduced to the flute, the oboe, the clarinet and the bassoon. This was done using the composition “Ma Mère l’Oye” by Maurice Ravel, in which each movement is dominated by one of the four instruments. Excerpts from an orchestral piece were played live in an arrangement for four woodwinds that was specially prepared for the occasion. The students of one class had studied the pavane from “Ma Mère l’Oye” on Orff instruments, and they presented their work to their fellow students.
Afterwards, 5th grade students were able to develop music on the theme of “Sleep”, analogous to the story of Sleeping Beauty in Ravel’s work. A week later, the class visited an RSB rehearsal to listen to the orchestral version of “Ma Mère l’Oye”.
The series was continued with string and horn instruments.

A LITTLE ORCHESTRA SCHOOL
At the Grundschule am Taunuswinkel in Berlin-Lichtenrade, RSB musicians simultaneously “swarmed” out into five different classes. A workshop entitled “A Symphony Orchestra – What’s That?” featured musical games about listening, developing a feel for sound and reacting to music as well as conducting was followed by an improvisation workshop on Zemlinski’s symphonic poem “The Little Mermaid”.
Pieces were created on the theme of the sea and, a week later, students visited an RSB rehearsal in order to hear the orchestra play “The Little Mermaid” live.