A Week at the American Suzuki Institute
Follow violinist, Isabella, through the activities of a typical week at the American Suzuki Institute. For more information on this year's institute, visit our website at uwsp.edu/suzuki/asi/.
Suzuki Violin Group Lesson
3rd and 4th year students in group lesson, review of Twinkle variations at the Institut Musical Suzuki of Lyon, France
Suzuki Method invented monumental endorsement from Pablo Casals
Shinichi Suzuki spent his own money to build a memorial carved in stone of legendary cellist Pablo Casals at Suzuki's institute in Japan, in order to remind people that Casals endorsed him. Casals never endorsed Suzuki! Not sure if Casals even knew who he was.
If there is any information that can be brought forward about any further involvement of Pablo Casals, other than Suzuki using his name mercilessly and fraudulently just to sell his books, please bring anything you have to our attention and we can print any correction or retraction. But as it stands now, this is what we are left with after quite a few researchers from around the world have looked into it, including contacting the Suzuki school in Matsumoto, Japan. Because of his ability to get away with this kind of deception, the Suzuki Method became the dominant educational method for young violin students arguably causing the greatest set back for the violin and its prominence in our culture in history. There is a distinct possibility that we will never fully recover from these five decades of attrition as to the violin being the most respected instrument in the world. The greatness of the classical violin in our society has been downsized compared to the other instrument groups during the Suzuki era, such as the guitar, keyboards, percussion, concert band and jazz band. In the Suzuki era, the strings have declined in importance and so has the symphony orchestra, which is made up of 50% string instruments. Instead, during the Suzuki violin era, the guitar has skyrocketed, so has percussion, keys, concert band and jazz band.
Pablo Casals is noted for the following three quotes. See if any of them resonate with Shinchi Suzuki's mimic-repetition-review-rote-all-technical-non-individual-memorization-ear-training?
The heart of the melody can never be put down on paper. --Pablo Casals
The child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn't been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him. --Pablo Casals
The art of interpretation is not to play what is written. --Pablo Casals
To read more on this story -
Note: Shortly after this article was posted, the widow of Pablo Casals, Marta Casals Istomin has confirmed to myself and my colleague, a film documentarian Peter Rosen, that while they saw a Suzuki student demonstration on their trip to Japan in 1961, they never endorsed the Suzuki Method. Mrs. Istomin was age 25 when she accompanied her husband Pablo Casals on a trip to Japan.
Marta Casals Istomin confirms that neither she or her husband Pablo Casals endorsed this in any way, and she personally as a life long music educator has always abhorred this type of dogmatic teaching method. She remembers that Yamaha tried something like this for pianists in the 90's, endorsed by Rostropovich. (He needed Yamaha sponsorship for something.) When she went with Slava to see the young pianists, she though it was frightening for the same reason. -Peter Rosen 11/27/13
Mr. Casals died in 1973. Mrs. Istomin is 77 today and resides in New York City upon retiring as President of the Manhattan School of Music and visiting cello professor at the Curtis Institute of Music. -Mark O'Connor (November 7th, 2013)
Closing Ceremony - Twinkles
Closing Ceremony concert at the 16th Suzuki Method World Convention in Matsumoto, Japan 2013.
Variations and Theme of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star