Suzuki J3
Егор Ульянов
Parent involvement: a chance to bond with your child. Ear training: Kids learn by ear (Suzuki is known as the mother tongue method). Social: group classes provide a social environment to reinforce new skills and practice playing as an ensemble.
A fun, playful introduction to music and song for 3-5-year-olds and an adult. An excellent preparation for starting an instrument! Students explore violin, viola, cello, and piano, along with singing, movement, rhythm games, and kazoo!
Our Summer Session is happening now! You can register for the class at any time during the session, and the fee will be prorated based on the remaining weeks. Email Kristina at se...@suzukiinstitute.org for more information.
Embark on a delightful musical journey with your child! Our one-hour weekly family music classes invite babies and toddlers aged 0 to 4 years, along with their parents and/or caregivers, to sing, dance, play instruments, and revel in a magical musical experience.
July 1, 2013 at 09:43 PM I was not raised on Suzuki, I was required to go through the standard etude progression. So far, none of the Suzuki people that I have seen ever actually bother to finish the method. They all quit it somewhere around the middle and then catch up on their technique, so I'm just curious if anyone here either finished it or witnessed someone else finishing it? I know that the last two books are Mozart concerti but I'm not asking if anyone has played those concerti, I want to know if they actually stuck with the specific Suzuki method itself all the way through the last book and finished it in Suzuki.
July 1, 2013 at 09:52 PM Yes! I laugh sometimes thinking back to those last days, learning Mozart 5 and 4 (or Books 9 and 10!) and starting scales and arpeggios, all with my first teacher. But she was great, and I got her take on such things. Later, of course, I learned the pieces (and scales) again and had a lot more to think about. But I was 9 or 10 then, and my greatest joy was listening to the Perlman recordings of those concerti every day on the bus rides to and from 4th grade. I loved those pieces! I'm sure I would roll my eyes at the fingerings and bowings in the books though.
I did a graduation recital just after I turned 11, when I changed to my second teacher, who would take me through to conservatory. If I recall correctly, the recital had something from each of the 10 books.
Looking back, my parents and I wonder when we might have switched had we done it over again. Certainly not before book 6 or 7. Possibly shortly after that point. But I was having a good time with my teacher and enjoyed playing. So nobody wanted to rock the boat.
July 1, 2013 at 10:05 PM I completed the Suzuki violin school with a registered suzuki teacher and in an active suzuki program through book 8 and then I learned Mendelshon's violin concerto and did a "graduation" recital for the suzuki method. I would say that yes, i completed the suzuki violin school but honestly I did not learn the Mozart's until college.
July 2, 2013 at 01:20 AM I think a fair number of Suzuki students go through Book 8 faithfully. However, at that point, you really would expect a good teacher to assess the student's skills and predilections and then choose repertoire accordingly. It would seem odd if two particular Mozart concertos were "the" pieces for every single student at that level to play, satisfactory though they may be in terms of the pedagogy.
I wonder if there aren't a fair number of students who, upon finishing Book 8, are not even close to being ready for Mozart 4 or 5, either because they were not assigned other challenging repertoire (or scales, studies, and the like) along the way, or because they slopped through the later books as fast as possible without polishing the pieces and thereby demonstrating thorough mastery of the underpinning techniques. I know from my own experience as a young student (30+ years ago) that working on pieces until they are highly polished is grueling, tedious work that does not appeal to most teenagers. My teacher back then never made me polish my pieces or even memorize them. But if he had, would I have quit? It's possible. Where would I be then?
July 2, 2013 at 03:35 AM Thanks for the replies! It's really interesting reading about other people's experiences. I always wondered what it would have been like to learn from a more repertoire-oriented perspective. I like etudes fine, it's just that there were so many! It wasn't until after Mendelssohn that I had a teacher who balanced the etudes and scales with some repertoire as well.
July 2, 2013 at 05:36 AM My wife studied all ten books when she lived in Nagoya, Japan, by the age of ten. She also had a lot of supplementary material during that period, including the traditional scales, etudes, Kreisler pieces, etc. After emigrating to the US, she studied at Colburn. She credits her early childhood experience in the Suzuki Method contributing to being well-prepared for the pace of learning and memorizing concertos and solo pieces.
I'd venture though, as a non-Suzuki teacher myself, that one doesn't really "complete" the Suzuki Method. Rather, it is a philosophy of learning music starting in childhood, and you do what you will with the philosophy. I only went through the third book myself before I moved into "traditional" lessons, but my first teacher Lori Franke taught me really wonderful things about music and playing the violin that I strive to communicate to my own students today. When I hear her current students at her Suzuki Academy play, I'm always thrilled with their tone quality, ensemble unity, and expression, from the oldest ones in high school to the little ones who aren't even in school yet.
July 2, 2013 at 01:04 PM I use the Suzuki books and have a fair amount of S.training, but Ie add a note-reader by the end of Book 1, and branch out into other literature at least by mid-Book 3. I don't commonly use Books 7 & 8. The literature in 5-8 is all quite of a level,imo, and continues to be heavily Baroque.
July 2, 2013 at 05:13 PM As a teacher, with training in all the books, I definitely do a lot of off-roading after about Book 6-7, just according to the students' emerging needs (perhaps to focus on a certain technique like spiccato or cultivating a better vibrato, etc.) and interests (tango music, jazz, more Romantic music, etc.). I think students of the violin should study the Mozart Concerti, but they may not be ready for them quite "in sequence."
July 3, 2013 at 05:22 PM I started with Suzuki and I have not gone through all the books. My impression is that some of the concerti are not accurate representations of the composers original work. That being the case, then I think the more appropriate question would be WHY would anyone go through all the books? If you are going to play a Mozart concerto, then wouldn't you be better off getting an edition that is more faithful to the original composition?
July 3, 2013 at 08:36 PM Did you hear about the Suzuki violin student who died and went to Hell. After a long period of arduous practice he finished book ten, at which point the devil congratulated him and gave him book 11, which he completed and was given book 12, and so on....
When we begin teaching children science, we don't start with molecular biology. We use simpler concepts that only in part resemble the more complex idea, so that a child at a certain cognitive stage is able to understand it.
As far Suzuki's books go, he used the repertoire he was familiar with (having studied in Germany) to teach a variety of playing skills. Some of the editing to accomplish those teaching goals do not currently align with our understanding of the period performance practices of those works. As teachers, it's important to distinguish between material we use to develop skills vs. material that is polished for concert performance. I teach Sarasate's "Malaguena" using some very funky Yost-inspired fingerings to all my students to develop shifting and vibrato, but I don't ever expect them to play the work in public.
However, there's plenty of material out there in the "traditional" world that doesn't make much sense either...ever look at all those concertos published by International? The Schott-Nachez edition of Vivaldi's A minor? The stylistic guidance given by fingerings and bowings in the Peters editions of the Beethoven string quartets? The Schirmer editions of the Mozart concertos are no better than Suzuki Book 9/10...no one plays that many natural harmonics all over the place anymore! I prefer the Barenreiter...
IMHO the changes in fingerings/bowings in Suzuki book were done for pedagogical reasons to give kids access to work otherwise inaccessible to them or to introduce a technical point. Gene already explained above.
July 7, 2013 at 09:11 AM Suzuki is a pedagogy, and as such the "method" is perpetual. Certainly, it is NOT a school of violin playing. The books are simply a collection of pieces to aid the teacher, and should be supplemented as necessary to develop a student to her/his best potential.
I believe what you mean to ask is whether anyone has completed all the pieces in all the books published under the Suzuki name. The answer is yes, many people. But this is not to say the Suzuki "method" was completed or even attained, for Suzuki is a philosophy and not a collection.
June 11, 2014 at 06:17 PM I have a student who had been playing out of Suzuki for quite a while with a different teacher. She was in book 3, but I realized that the pattern in Suzuki was not challenging enough and very bleak. I pulled out book 4 and decided to do some Vivaldi, and eventually the Bach double so she could actually use the techniques that were being exercised, especially at her school orchestra. I want to push her more musically since she puts in time and effort just about every day. She's afraid to play loudly, but the Book 3 was just more of the same. . . I'd like to know what other teachers have had their students play after that "middle-of-the-Suzuki-method".
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