Fredell Lack
American violinist championed in Britain by John Barbirolli
FREDELL LACK, who has died aged 95, was an American violinist from Oklahoma who made regular visits to British concert halls during the 1950s and 1960s.
She was championed by John Barbirolli, under whose baton she played several concertos with the Halle Orchestra, although in later life she recalled him as “a man who had to have his liquor”.
She made her Wigmore Hall debut in October 1959, returning there on several occasions over the next decade. One critic praised her “pungent, resonant tone and vigorous style of playing” in repertoire ranging from Corelli to Brahms and Prokofiev.
She also spoke of making more than 20 recordings for the BBC and enjoying the repeat-fee cheques when they dropped through her mail box.
Fredell Lack was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on February 19 1922, the eldest of three children of August Isaac Lack, who owned a chain of stores supplying parts for the automotive industry; her mother was the company’s accountant.
She had taken to the piano at an early age, but at six was taken to a violin recital given by Tosca Berger, whom she met backstage afterwards. The violinist had been touring with her father, who later that night was taken ill.
Knowing no one in Tulsa, Tosca Berger remembered the Lack family, tracked down their phone number and asked if they knew of a doctor. She was then stranded in Tulsa for several weeks as her father recovered, so to pass the time offered daily violin lessons to the young girl.
Fredell Lack was 10 when the family moved to Houston, Texas, from where, two years later, she set out by bus for New York, accompanied by her mother, to seek out Louis Persinger, teacher of Yehudi Menuhin. Persinger took her on and helped to secure a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music. “I absolutely adored him,” she recalled, although that adoration palled somewhat when he began to adore her in return. “I just ignored that,” she said of her womanising teacher.
After she graduated, her father, who she confessed was prone to indulging her, got wind that a splendid Stradivarius violin was for sale through a New York dealer. However, he wanted her to choose it on merit and “not be influenced by the name inside it”, she recalled. “So they blindfolded me, and I played one instrument after the other. I played five notes on this violin and said, ‘Oh, this is it’.” Her father paid $38,000 for the Stradivarius; it sold for $5 million in 2012.
She made her New York debut in 1943, accompanied by Albert Hirsch who became her regular pianist, and was soon making regular trips across the Atlantic. In 1951 she was placed a respectable ninth in the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. She was a regular soloist with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, where Barbirolli was chief conductor in the 1960s.
Fredell Lack continued playing well into her eighties. “I played all [musical] periods,” she said. “I always had a big repertoire and wanted to play everything.” Her repertoire included Gian Carlo Menotti’s Concerto and Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade, both works neglected by her contemporaries.
In 1948 she married Ralph Eichhorn, a gastroenterologist with whom she shared a passion for animals. They had a golden retriever called Josh. She continued touring and teaching.
She spent more than 50 years at the University of Houston, where she was the first string teacher on the music faculty, giving her first lessons in the ladies’ lavatory because no one had thought to provide teaching rooms.
Eichhorn predeceased her in 2014 and she is survived by a son and a daughter.