The gipsy mean fiddler

SOONER or later we will find a pigeonhole for Roby Lakatos and his music. Last year two CDs, one television appearance with Jools Holland and a week at Ronnie Scott's club paved the way. Maybe tonight's 10pm Late Prom will finally do it. The spherical genius - he is 5ft 6in and almost as wide - is a direct descendant of the 19 century Janos Bihari, friend of Liszt and Beethoven and dubbed "King of the Gipsy Violinists". But contradicting the red waistcoat and gold earrings cartoon is the fact that Roby graduated in 1984 with the gold medal for violin playing from Budapest's Bla Bartk Conservatory.

A favourite story of his is the night at his club in Brussels when Stephane Grappelli (jazz) and Yehudi Menuhin (classical) shared one table and the Los Angeles Philharmonic (everything) occupied the rest. He went on to play with all three, at their invitation, as well as Maxim Vengerov and Zubin Mehta with orchestras like the French National and the Dresden Philharmonic. And it is this "unorthodox gipsy fusion", as he classifies it, that he brings to Kensington and hopes will establish him at the top of the British classical charts as it has all over Europe and Asia.

No wonder, then, that on the eve of his first visit to the Proms, Roby, 36, nervously strokes his Hercule Poirot-style waxed moustache in his 4th floor apartment on the Avenue Louise, the most expensive street in Brussels according to the taxi driver, a Roby fan.

"I'm working on my next CD," he says, vaguely waving at the drum kit and upright piano on one side of the mantelpiece and the hi-fi and video equipment on the other. A display cabinet is full of fiddles, while his own instrument, a priceless Guardi, lies cased on the sofa, clearly ready to spring into action. In 1986 he was invited to leave his home in Budapest to play at a Brussels nightspot, Les Ateliers de la Grande Ile; it was then that he collected the four men who comprise his group, who have played with him ever since. For the next 11 years Roby lived the life of many good, individual performers, popular but unspectacular.

"My life was settled," he says, "every night I played from 8.30pm to four or five in the morning." He brought his childhood sweetheart, Ebolya, from Budapest, married her and produced daughters Nicoletta, 14, and Miriam, eight. "We did the weekend shopping and I picked up the kids from school."

It all changed in 1996.

"I was playing a Paganini Caprice with Vadim Repin in Munich," he recalls, "when the director of Deutsche Grammophon said: 'Would you like a contract?'

I replied: 'It will be grotesque for a gipsy violinist to sign with a classical label,' and laughed."

A week later the contract arrived and Roby immediately began work on the first CD, Lakatos.

"That disc changed my life. I now spend more time touring with my band than I do at home. But I love it. Ebolya brings up the children and when they're older she will tour with me.

We're both very happy."

Needless to say, both daughters play the violin, as the photographs scattering the furniture attest.

"When I'm home I work the girls very hard," he says with a glint in his eye.

"Practise, practise, practise - then we go to the cinema."

ROBY has no idea of the numbers involved when it comes to the extended Lakatos family back home in Budapest, which now includes his daughters.

"We are all related," he explains.

"There are many brothers-in-law in a gipsy family. My father is the patriarch of our family branch and I expect to take over when he goes."

But there is a serious drawback to this dynastic dream. Roby and his brother and cousin have between them six children - all girls.

"When I return home from the Proms," he says, "I shall have a holiday and work hard to make a boy."

BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, SW7; 020 7589 8212.

Copyright 2001
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