Concert Violinist Fodor--How the Music Changed

Violinist Eugene Fodor came from Turkey Creek, Colo., and was known for his preference for cowboy boots and denim over the more formal attire of the concert hall. Today his family and friends are wondering about other seeming contradictions in his career and personal life.

Fodor was arrested over the weekend in Massachusetts on charges of breaking and entering and cocaine possession and is now in a rehabilitation center. Fodor’s mother, Antoinette Fodor, who lives in Morrison, Colo., said: “It’s been difficult, we never expected it, we visited him a few weeks ago and he seemed OK. We have spoken to him and he seems to be OK. He’s going to get treatment and I don’t think it will take long because he has not had the problem long. He says he looks forward to resuming his career and all his fans and friends are supporting him 100%.”

The 39-year-old American musician, who shared the second prize (no first was awarded) at the 1974 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, had spent the weekend in the Duke’s County Jail in Edgartown. Fodor was incarcerated on Saturday, after a district judge reportedly refused to accept his 300-year-old violin in lieu of bail.

He has now “gone into a treatment facility,” according to his New York manager, Vincent Wagner, of Hillyer International Inc. He said that Fodor, accompanied by one of his Boston lawyers, had been released Monday. “Gene was persuaded he wanted to (undertake treatment) now,” Wagner told The Times.

Fodor’s lawyer in Boston, Harvey Silverglate, said Fodor was “trying to get back on his feet. This is not a lifelong problem. It is of relatively recent vintage.”

Silverglate’s associate, Michael Altman, said: “It’s so contradictory, this man, traveling with a $550,000 Guarnerius violin and with an American Express Gold Card in his pocket, being picked up for breaking into a motel room.”

Fodor had worked steadily as a concert violinist, but he had failed to reach the top echelon of performing artists. A lifelong nonsmoker and nondrinker, his run-in with the law was unexpected.

Wagner, his manager for the last six years, said he had no previous knowledge of Fodor’s alleged drug problems. “I am very surprised and disheartened,” Wagner said.

A friend of Fodor’s, the owner of an upper West Side vegetarian restaurant near the violinist’s apartment in New York City, said, “Gene was always running around on his bicycle, staying pretty healthy, taking vitamins. Just a month and a half ago he went through a sudden change. He went down to Mexico and all of a sudden he was very strange. He became emaciated, his behavior got very weird.”

When Eugene Fodor won the Tchaikovsky silver medal in 1974, his first manager was Harold Shaw of Shaw Concerts. Obviously upset at the news of Fodor’s arrest, Shaw does not believe there were personal or family problems that contributed to the current situation. “Eugene had no special problems that I was aware of.

“The pressures came from the lack of a major career. When he won and returned to Denver, he was met at the airport by his father, mother, girlfriend and his horse. It made all the television news programs because of the horse.” Indeed many people in the classical music world were turned off by Fodor’s Western macho image of bare chest, denim, cowboy boots and Stetson hat.

James Murtha was Fodor’s first press agent. He remembers the young man as vital and exuberant. “He had all the qualities that make a winner. When I saw that the Western image was going against the grain in the classic music business I tried to downplay it. He stayed with me about four years. I saw him a year ago and he seemed happy. I never got a hint something might be wrong.”

“When I heard the news I couldn’t sleep. My concern for him is not as a violinist but as a person. He was like a surgeon who couldn’t perform major surgery. Even if he is successful in a rehab program, the problem about his lack of a major career will remain,” said former manager Shaw.

A friend who requested anonymity stated Fodor had asked him recently for help in converting a check on a Hawaiian bank to cash. “He told me he wanted to buy some diamonds and that the merchant was only going to be in town one day.”

The violinist’s whereabouts were known only by his closest associates and attempts to reach him were unsuccessful.

Donald Weilerstein, former first violinist and founder of the Cleveland Quartet, said: “He was an absolutely excellent violinist. I ran into him in South America in 1985. . . . He played an arrangement of the Moses Fantasy with the quartet. He was a glamorous type of person. I know that people criticized him from a musical point of view, but I had a lot of respect for him as a violinist.”

Fodor’s international career was launched when he shared second prize with two Soviet violinists--no first prize was awarded--at the 1974 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. But his talent had been spotted early, and by the time he went to Moscow at the age of 24, he had already taken first prizes in a number of lesser competitions.

A native of Turkey Creek, Colo., Fodor made his debut at the age of 10 with the Denver Symphony. Later he studied with Ivan Galamian at the Juilliard School in New York, with Josef Gingold and others at Indiana University--where he took a diploma in 1970--and with Jascha Heifetz at USC. He won the Young Musicians Foundation competition in Los Angeles in 1968 and the Paganini International Competition in Genoa in 1972.

After he returned from the Soviet Union, Fodor’s musicianship seemed to take a back seat to publicity of a non-musical nature. He was photographed riding a horse on his family’s ranch in Colorado; he gave interviews extolling the virtues of exercise and sports participation, and to which he wore boots; he appeared barechested, holding his violin, in After Dark magazine.

Married for 10 years and with three children, Fodor was recently divorced.

“He is sorting out his career,” said Altman. “He is at a crucial stage of his life. On one level it is a mid-life crisis. Right now, he is hurting considerably. The incident is a cry for help.”

Contributing to this report were Walter Price, Hannah Hanani and Nicole Atkinson.