Direction: Hans Ulrich Kolf

Rehearsals: Fridays, 4:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. in the large hall of the music school.

Prerequisites: Advanced instrumental playing

About the history

1952: First concert under the direction of its founder Helmut Lossau.
1954: Günter Herrmann takes over the direction for 31 years
1975: Integration of the youth orchestra into the music school of the city of Wolfsburg
1986: Klaus Papies becomes director of the orchestra
1998: Michael Pattberg and Hans Ulrich Kolf take over the leadership
Since 2003 Hans Ulrich Kolf leads the orchestra alone

Since by this time the proportion of adult instrumentalists at the music school had risen to over 25%, the orchestra was now opened up to adults again and renamed the "Orchestra of the Music School of the City of Wolfsburg".

In December 1998, the first concert under the new direction took place in the auditorium of the Ratsgymnasium.

Twice the orchestra presented itself successfully with classics of film music under the motto NIGHT OF THE MOVIES Part I and II.

The highlight in 2000 was a trip to Japan, to which the orchestra was invited by VW Group Japan and the Toyohashi Symphony Orchestra. The four successful concerts in Tokyo and Toyohashi included performances of Johannes Brahms' Second Symphony.

This symphony was also the musical highlight of the successful 50th anniversary concert of the orchestra in 2002, which took place at the Wolfsburg Theater.

Since 2001, audiences in Wolfsburg have been able to experience the orchestra with successful children's and family concerts, which are held annually at the Wolfsburg Theater in cooperation with the Wolfsburg Lions Clubs. The musical focus of the programs are works such as Herbert Chappel's "Paddington Bear's First Concert" and Sergei Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf," but an "Orchestra Olympics" in which students from the music school present their instruments together with the orchestra has also been performed. These works are always accompanied by the performance of a classical symphony in order to introduce the mostly young audience to classical works in a playful way.

The orchestra's 50 musicians, aged between 12 and 75, are directed by Hans Ulrich Kolf. Born in Bochum, he has been violist at the Braunschweig State Orchestra since 1984 and at the music school of the city of Wolfsburg since 1986. He has also been director of the Philharmonic Volkswagen Orchestra since 2002. Rehearsals take place once a week in the music school's Kulturturnhalle. Additional rehearsal periods are a regular duty for the high-performance ensemble. In musical terms, Hans Ulrich Kolf is continuing the orchestra's proven and successful musical tradition, but he is also determinedly pursuing new innovative paths, for example by intensively striving for cooperation with the music school orchestras from the region. In the future, he hopes to cooperate more with his colleagues from the region in order to bring new attractive projects to life. A first big step in this direction already took place with the final concert on the Day of the Braunschweig Landscape 2004, where 80 musicians from the music school orchestras of the region played music together.

In the course of its many years of existence, the orchestra has already accompanied the city of Wolfsburg musically at many important cultural stations and provided a musical framework for many events.

So also in the year 2004 at the day of the Braunschweig landscape on the stage of the national horticultural show. Under the direction of Hans Ulrich Kolf, the dedicated musicians celebrated a triumphant success here with the latest "Night of the Movies" program. A concert that culminated with the title music from John Williams' "Star Wars," accompanied by nighttime fireworks.