Teaching Genius Dorothy Delay and the Making of a Musician (Softcover) (Amadeus) Review

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(More customer reviews)Barbara Lourie Sand's book about Dorothy DeLay is written by a polished journalist who knows how to tell a good story. The early part of the book is thus the most interesting, tracing DeLay's life and development, first as a moderately successful concert violinist and chamber musician, next as longtime assistant to the great pedagogue Ivan Galamian, and finally as legendary teacher and mentor of many of the most successful classical violinists of the 20th century.
Sand mentions in a preface that she shaped this book during the course of a ten-year association with DeLay during which she was also writing articles about some of her well-known students. She obviously had a warm and close relationship with DeLay, her husband Edward Newhouse, and her students, and while this gave her an enviable access it probably hurt her journalistic acumen in the end. Too often, troubling questions are raised and treated dismissively, or quickly dropped--the hardships of raising and nurturing exceptionally gifted children, or outright abuse in the name of discipline and training, for example. Sand treats DeLay's rupture with Galamian in a fair amount of detail, but does not mention that some of DeLay's students have broken very publicly with her as well. Criticisms of DeLay and her style are mostly confined to one chapter and are largely made by unnamed sources. Though DeLay's approach to teaching is discussed in detail, important issues, such as the pros and cons of learning from a teacher who herself never demonstrates, are left untouched.
In short, this book is a good read and intriguing glimpse into the arcane and competitive world of top classical music-making. Because of her unwillingness to "go for the jugular," as she admits at one point, Barbara Lourie Sand loses a chance to make it even more.
Minor quibble: The Accolay Concerto is _not_part of the Suzuki violin literature.

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