By Liviana
14th September 2026
I would like to tell you a story. It is the story of two remarkable people who, fifty years ago, decided that Italian children should have the Suzuki Method too. It is a story of courage, determination and a great deal of hard work, and it has inspired generations of Italian Suzuki pupils, families and teachers, myself included.
It all began in Chiaverano
In 1976 the American viola player Lee Robert and her husband, the cellist Antonio Mosca, began teaching a small group of children in Chiaverano, a village near Ivrea. Lee and Antonio had fallen in love with the idea that music can be learned like a mother tongue, and Lee had gone all the way to Japan to train with Shinichi Suzuki himself. When she came back they decided to bring his method to a country that had never heard of it.
It wasn't as easy as they had hoped
In the Italy of the 1970s, the idea that a child of three or four could start the violin seemed almost absurd. As Lee and Antonio tell it in their book "50 anni di musica insieme" (Fifty Years of Music Together), the early years brought scepticism and, at times, open opposition. Everything had to be built from scratch, and for a long time there was no place to call their own. The lessons happened wherever they could borrow a room, from a village library to a nursery school. But the children enjoyed playing, the families were enthusiastic, and Lee and Antonio, despite all the difficulties, kept experimenting with more and more children, first in Turin, where they lived, and then in Cascinette d'Ivrea, the village where Antonio was born.
From one school to many
The adventures of the first Suzuki school in Italy would fill a whole book, so I will tell you just a few of the most significant milestones that brought the Italian Suzuki community to where it is today.
In 1977 Lee and Antonio created the Orchestra Suzuki, the youngest chamber orchestra in Europe, which has since given more than three hundred concerts in Italy and abroad, playing before Pope John Paul II in the Vatican and at the opening of the General Assembly of the United Nations in Geneva.
In 1978 the school finally had a home of its own, in Turin.
In 1983 Shinichi Suzuki came to Italy and listened to our pupils himself; for Lee and Antonio his enthusiasm was the confirmation they had been waiting for, and from then on the method began to spread across the country.
In 1993 they founded the Istituto Suzuki Italiano together with four of the teachers who had joined them, starting the first Suzuki teacher-training courses in the country: today Italy has around 230 Suzuki teachers and more than forty schools.
In 2006 Turin hosted the 14th Suzuki Method World Convention, with 3,500 children from twenty-eight countries.
Finally, in 2018, Lee and Antonio passed the baton to me and to Marco Mosca, their son and a cellist at the Teatro Regio, but they are still part of everything we do, and they still organise events of their own, with the same enthusiasm they have always had.
Anno Suzuki: a celebration for the entire Italian Suzuki community
When we realised that all of this was turning fifty, a single evening was never going to be enough. We wanted a big "festa", as we say in Italy, and we wanted it to last a whole year. A festa for Lee and Antonio, first of all, for everything they gave us. A festa for the community that grew up around them: the children of today, the pupils of yesterday, the families and the teachers. A festa for Turin, a city that fifty years ago was open-minded enough to welcome an idea that had never been tried here.
So we decided to fill a whole year with music, from November 2025 to December 2026, and we called it the "Anno Suzuki" (the Suzuki Year).
But we didn't stop there! Every Suzuki school in Italy grew out of what Lee and Antonio began fifty years ago, and we wanted them to be part of the festa too. This is why we asked the Istituto Suzuki Italiano to join us and coordinate the celebration across the country, from Turin down to Naples. Each school has made its own contribution with a concert or an event.
Our favourite moments from the Suzuki Year so far
Every event of the Suzuki Year has had the Suzuki pupils at its centre, those of today and those of yesterday, many of them now professional musicians. In some cases several generations have met on the same stage. We started on 17 November 2025, at the Teatro Regio, where Umberto Clerici, who began as a small boy in Antonio's cello class, made his debut as a conductor with the Filarmonica Teatro Regio Torino.
On 9 February 2026 the Teatro Alfieri hosted the opening concert, "Il Suono delle Nostre Radici" (The Sound of Our Roots): three orchestras on one stage, three generations of the same school, nearly a hundred and forty Suzuki musicians aged six to sixty-five. One of the three was an orchestra of fifty-seven former pupils, reunited for the occasion.
A week later, in the Unione Musicale season, it was the turn of Armoniosa, the ensemble founded by the Cerrato brothers, Francesco and Stefano, who also grew up in our classrooms and now perform all over the world.
On 2 May came "Ottanta arpe, una voce" (Eighty Harps, One Voice): the European Suzuki Harp Ensemble, led by Tiziana Loi, brought together around eighty young harpists and their teachers from fourteen schools in Italy, France, Germany and Switzerland, in tribute to Gabriella Bosio, who started the first Suzuki harp class in our school.
On 14 May the Orchestra Suzuki opened the Salone Internazionale del Libro, Italy's biggest book fair, playing the Italian and European anthems.
On 14 June we left the concert hall altogether and filled Piazza Castello, one of the most beautiful squares in Turin, with a flash mob playing the Twinkle Variations, which in Italy we call "Bella Stella". Five generations played the theme and all its variations together, with a big drum keeping time instead of a conductor.
On 13 September the Orchestra Suzuki played again at MITO SettembreMusica, the festival that has been inviting our children since its early years, when Lee and Antonio were conducting them.
And on 21 December the year will close at the Auditorium Giovanni Agnelli, in the Lingotto Musica season: four orchestras, more than 180 musicians aged four to sixty, and Antonio and Marco Mosca, father and son, taking turns on the podium.
Beyond our expectations
The Suzuki Year has brought us so much joy. What we have seen, month after month, is that the community Lee and Antonio built around them is still very much alive: former pupils who had not played together in decades could not wait to do it once more, alongside the children who now sit in their place.
Theatres, institutions and schools from Turin and beyond welcomed the project just as warmly. What began as our own anniversary soon became a celebration for everyone, and that tells us everything: fifty years on, the bonds inside the Suzuki community are as strong as ever, and the community is still growing.
The next fifty years
After fifty years, the Suzuki Method in Italy is still not as widely known as it deserves to be. There are families all over the country who have never heard of it, and children who would flourish with it but will never get the chance. One of the reasons we wanted the celebration to last a whole year was to try to change that, even a little.
Our hope is that the years ahead bring many more children to an instrument at three or four, many more musicians who choose to become Suzuki teachers, and many more schools where all this can happen.
And one final hope: that our story inspires other schools around Europe to share the method as widely as they can.
You can follow the rest of our Suzuki Year at www.suzukicenter.it/anno-suzuki.
Liviana Pittau
Vice President and Director, Accademia Suzuki Talent Center, Turin
www.suzukicenter.it
