Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Violinist Mark O'Connor digs into resume of the founder of Suzuki Method and finds lots of misleading errors

Documentation showing that Suzuki was not accepted by Klinger as a student. See O'Connor's blog for complete details.
It turns out that Schinichi Suzuki, founder of the Suzuki Method which has taught millions of kids how to play the violin, really padded his resume with lots of factual errors. He had claimed that Albert Einstein was his guardian and that he studied for eight years during the 1920s as a student of Karl Klinger at the Berlin Hochschule. Violinist Mark O'Connor, in his blog Parting Shots has found out that none of this is true and levels some critical comments at the Suzuki method in general.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

James, I understand that you are just reporting what others have reported, but I think it is important that you look more deeply into this story. Suzuki never claimed to have been a student at that conservatory. He studied violin privately with the distinguished violinist, Karl Klingler, who taught there. This was documented by Klingler's daughter. There are many inaccuracies in Mark O'Connor's statements. He is trying to promote his own violin method, but counter arguments in the past week have shown that the evidence Mark O'Connor "discovered" were not proving what he claimed.