Starting young: piano from age four

Supporting children by giving them better access to education and culture is the approach taken by the Wilo Foundation. This includes giving young people easy, child-friendly access to singing and music.

As part of its community involvement in the Oberfranken/Hof region, the Wilo Foundation began in 2012 to support a new project run by the Hof Music Academy, “Piano from Age Four”. This project gives children as young as four years old the chance to learn to play the piano.

The Suzuki Method developed by Japanese violin teacher Shinichi Suzuki, which has a long-established place in early instrumental training at the Music Academy of the Hof Symphony Orchestra, has proved its worth as a method for young children all over the world. Since the Suzuki Method involves learning to play music by first listening and then imitating the sounds, even very young children can learn to play an instrument. The idea of this ‘native language method’, as the Suzuki Method is also known, was adopted by a piano teacher at the Music Academy of the Hof Symphony Orchestra and developed into a piano teaching method in its own right. This is reflected in the “Piano from Age Four” project run by the Hof Music Academy. It enables children as young as four years old to learn to play the piano by starting with familiar children’s songs.

Our funding partner:

The Hof Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1945, is a cultural and educational organisation that sees itself as a musical/social instrument of change, with a duty to make the name of the City of Hof famous well beyond the confines of the region. The special feature of the classes offered by the Music Academy of the Hof Symphony Orchestra is the top-quality teaching provided by professional instrumentalists of the symphony orchestra and other highly qualified music teachers (all of them with a degree in music) from the orchestra’s own music school. 

Funding partner

Hof Symphony Orchestra gGmbH
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