Memories of Shinichi Suzuki: Son of his Environment

Lois Shepheard

• Editore: Interactive Publications Pty Ltd
• Anno: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781922120144
• Argomento: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Categoria: Musikbiographien

Suzuki may be a name renowned for automobiles, but this book introduces us to a very different Suzuki - the Suzuki who was a world leader in the teaching of music. Dr Shinichi Suzuki, creator of "The Suzuki Method", is well remembered for his extraordinary warmth, care, and sense of humour. Part biography, part memoir, this important book recalls scenes from Suzuki's life, and many of the author's own experiences as his student in Japan. Both humorous and culturally informative, this book illustrates how Suzuki was influenced by Japanese history and his Zen beliefs, making him "the son of his environment". Above all, this book reminds us that Suzuki gave far more to the world than just a method of teaching. In the bookSuzuki Violin School, Volume 1, Dr Suzuki gives an impassioned plea to parents: "Please raise your child to be a fine human being." Students, teachers, and lovers of music and history alike will enjoy this stroll through the life and teachings of the quick-witted Dr Suzuki, who turned the music education world upside down.

5

Memories

I’ll never forget the first time I heard a group of Japanese children playing in real life. Despite all the TV coverage I’d seen, I was quite unprepared for the impact this performance would make on me. I was near tears as I watched a large group of students aged no more than nine playing Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins. As I remember the event even now, I have a lump in my throat.

I attended some Suzuki Method Teachers’ Conventions in Honolulu. I remember at one of these, sitting at dinner with a very international group. As far as I can recall, it included Professor William and Constance Starr23 from the US, Dr Honda24 from Japan and Dr Alfred Garson25 from Canada. We were entertained during dinner by a group of little Japanese violinists. It hit me suddenly what a heavy responsibility we have, guiding children. The group on stage trusted their teachers implicitly and had been taught to play beautiful music.

23 William Starr, violin teacher and Constance Starr, piano teacher, pioneers of the Suzuki Method in the United States.

24 Masaaki Honda, leader and supporter of the Suzuki movement in Japan. Dr Honda led the overseas concert tour groups of Japanese Suzuki children.

25 Alfred (Henrik) Garson, one of the first exponents of the Suzuki Method in Canada.

‘You could train a group of children, anywhere in the world, to do anything,’ I mused as I listened to Mozart. It was a very sobering and somewhat disturbing thought.

Looking at my old programmes, I notice that one of the young soloists at a Honolulu conference was a lad by the name of Haruo Goto. Haruo now teaches in Sydney.

Dr Garson told us about one of Suzuki’s early visits to Canada. Alfred had set up a lecture/demonstration. The visiting Japanese children performed a most difficult programme and then the audience was invited to ask Dr Suzuki some questions.

A nun rose and proceeded to explain her difficulties with teaching.

‘Professor Suzuki, I have a number of students,’ she said. ‘They don’t have good posture and I just can’t get them to hold the bow correctly. They never seem to be able to play a piece from memory; they just don’t have the confidence. They don’t play well in tune either. What should I do?’

Suzuki’s answer was immediate.

‘Pray to God,’ he said (as Alfred Garson reported).

Going to Japan

As soon as the Western music world became aware that hundreds of Japanese children played the violin, foreign teachers began to visit Dr Suzuki’s studio. He welcomed them all and was generous with his information. I was one of those who began to make repeated trips to Japan.

Suzuki’s home was in the city of Matsumoto in Japan’s Nagano Prefecture. It lies between the Japanese Alps and the plateau of Utsgushigahara.

The first time I got off the train at Matsumoto, I was confronted with a country town. Facing the station, the shops and restaurants had the traditional navy-blue curtains over the doorways so you had to bow your head to enter. A couple of visits later and I found the railway station had a paved taxi rank area with a uniformed taxi official in charge, a department store across the road and a “Kentucky Fried” in the main street, complete with a large Colonel Sanders on the footpath. It was sad in a way.

A few years after that, someone put a hole through that Colonel Sanders’ head…

Suzuki taught in the Kaikan building of Talent Education,26 just along the road from the NHK27 building. There used to be a park in front of the Kaikan. I took some Melbourne teachers and my daughter there for a few weeks. Cathy had turned fourteen and I wanted her to again meet this man with his very special mind. I wouldn’t have worried at all if she’d had no lessons from him. However, we went when it was the New Year holiday and there were temporarily no teacher trainees or children in the Kaikan. To demonstrate his teaching, Dr Suzuki took advantage of Cathy’s presence and gave her at least one lesson every day. What an opportunity for her (and me!)

26 Opened in 1967.

27 Japan Broadcasting Company.

By this time, Dr Suzuki was elderly and his vibrato had become very slow. (Vibrato is the fast wavering of pitch, done by the player’s left hand. It looks as if the violinist is shaking the hand/arm.) I asked him one day how he taught it.

‘I say, “Don’t play like Suzuki”,’ he replied.

Later on, when I got to know him well, I would never have asked such an impolite question.

Dr Suzuki with Lois’s daughter, Cathy, aged 14.
Note the picture of Kreisler on the wall.

His early recordings of the pieces in his violin books show a very well controlled vibrato, as do recordings from the string quartet he had with his brothers. Likewise a performance of the César Franck Sonata (Berlin c. 1928) shows him well in control of vibrato speed as a young man.28

28 Issued on CD by Symposium Records: The Great Violinists Vol. VII.

In the earlier years of his teaching, Suzuki concentrated on left hand techniques but later his focus was on the right arm. We remember he studied with Karl Klingler who, Flesch said, ‘divulged the secrets of the bow arm’.29

29 The Art of Violin Playing (Carl Flesch, 1924).

(Here again we have evidence of Klingler’s ability to change. Just twenty years before that statement, Flesch wrote that Klingler: ‘possessed great technical and musical talent, which however did not fully mature, owing to the peculiarities and shortcomi...