http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/arts/mark-oconnor-fans-a-debate-about-the-suzuki-method.html 2014-12-07 23:39:11 Mark O’Connor Fans a Debate About the Suzuki Method Charges by a violinist with a rival teaching method that Shinichi Suzuki fabricated parts of his biography have jolted the music-lesson world. === The bitterly traded charges of deception and unfair attacks would have been right at home in a rough-and-tumble political campaign. In this case, though, the acrimony erupted in an area that is usually much more placid: the market for children’s violin lessons. It all began when the American violin virtuoso and composer Yet the kerfuffle exploded in the violin world like an out-of-tune screech in a Haydn quartet. The Suzuki method is vastly popular, selling some half a million books a year, according to its publisher; Mr. O’Connor is “People are sad, I think,” said Mr. O’Connor began making his accusations in long posts online last year, but the charges gained a wider audience this fall after he was quoted by The Telegraph’s British news site In a recent interview, Mr. O’Connor explained the goals of his own violin method, which he calls “an American school of string playing,” and spoke excitedly of his hopes of inspiring a new generation of players. He took out his violin to demonstrate why he thinks “ But he made clear that the hostilities had not ceased: At one point, he accused Mr. Suzuki of “con artistry.” His main factual charges involve several episodes Mr. Suzuki described in his book “ Mr. O’Connor also asked why Mr. Suzuki is often called “Dr. Suzuki” when he lacked a Ph.D. Gilda Barston, the chief executive of the International Suzuki Association, said he did not refer to himself that way, but that many of his followers called him “Dr.” as a sign of respect after he was awarded various honorary doctorates. In a But Mr. Suzuki claimed in the book to be a private student of Mr. Klingler’s. A well-known protégé of Mr. Klingler’s, the violinist “Klingler told me about Suzuki,” she said, adding that while Mr. Klingler did not generally take private students, he made an exception for Mr. Suzuki, whose father owned a violin factory in Japan. She said that she had the impression that Mr. Suzuki had been an “on and off” student. “But he studied with him, and he gave him also a beautiful violin to say thank you when he went back to Japan,” she recalled. “It was a violin that I played at my recitals. So I know for sure that Suzuki was under his guidance.” Mr. Suzuki’s relationship with Einstein is less clear. A chapter on Einstein in his book contains a subheading that reads, in the English translation, “Dr. Einstein as My Guardian.” Mr. Suzuki did not claim that he lived with Einstein or that Einstein was his guardian in any legal sense. Rather Mr. Suzuki wrote that when he was a young man in Berlin, a family friend, the biochemist Leonor Michaelis, had asked Einstein to look out for him. He wrote that he had attended some concerts and social events with Einstein and that he had been greatly inspired by him. Several Einstein scholars said that there were no indications that Mr. Suzuki had a close or lasting relationship with Einstein. But there is evidence that the two men met in Berlin. There is a letter that Mr. Michaelis wrote to Einstein inquiring about a visit from Mr. Suzuki, Finally, there is the question of the concert that Casals attended. Mr. O’Connor dissects this event “Did Suzuki make up this entire story regarding Casals in order to sell his violin method to the West?” Mr. O’Connor wrote. An examination of his claims shows that the concert did occur, but that there were minor errors in the way it was described in Mr. Suzuki’s book. Casals was 84 at the time, not 75, as the book said, and the remarks attributed to him were evidently translated from the English that Casals spoke into Japanese, and then back into English for the English translation of the book. The Suzuki association provided another photograph clearly showing both men at the event, and Lois Shepheard, a teacher of the Suzuki method who met Mr. Suzuki and wrote a biography of him, provided Casals’s widow, Marta Casals Istomin, said in a telephone interview that she did not wish to be drawn into a controversy over competing violin methods. But she confirmed that she had attended the Suzuki concert in Tokyo with Casals in 1961. She said that Casals, who had taken a lifelong interest in children and music for children, had been “very moved” by the sight of so many young children playing music, and that he had embraced Mr. Suzuki, but that he had not endorsed the method or given much thought to it. “He was very touched to hear these children,” Ms. Casals Istomin said in an interview, adding that Casals had wept, as he often did at concerts. “At that moment, he didn’t think of it as a method. He thought of it as an idea of bringing young people together with music, not whether it was a good method or a bad method.” She said that the recording of the event — in which Pablo Casals described the concert as “one of the most moving scenes that one can see” and praised the adults for training children in music, saying, “Perhaps it’s music that will save the world” — appeared genuine. Dismayed by the discord, Ms. Reagen, the violin teacher in Skokie, praised both methods and said the books should speak for themselves. “Even if what Mark was saying is absolutely true — and I don’t believe it is — my question is: What difference does it make?” she said.