Global impact of Suzuki: The method and the movement

In the 1950s, string teachers in the West, began to catch wind of a Japanese man named Shinichi Suzuki, who was teaching remarkably young children to play the violin. A film circulated of 750 Suzuki students – tiny children – playing the Bach ‘Double’. It was a feat not thought possible at the time and teachers were astounded. The great cellist Pablo Casals travelled to Tokyo to see a group of these children perform, after which he made his famous pronouncement: ‘Perhaps it is music that will save the world.’ After living through nearly the entire 20th century, Shinichi Suzuki died in 1998 at the age of 99.