My grandmother, Kató Havas, who has died aged 98, was a celebrated violinist and violin teacher.
She was born in the Transylvanian town of Készdivásárhely, in what is now Romania, but she always considered herself Hungarian. Enchanted by the music of the local Gypsy violinists, at the age of four she begged her parents, Sándor, a land agent, and Paula (nee Weinberger), for a violin of her own.
When instead they bought her a toy piano, Kató smashed it up in a rage, insulted that her parents should treat her newfound passion like a childish whim. The following year she got the violin she wanted and by the age of eight she was enrolled in the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest as a child prodigy.
Her move to Budapest was the beginning of not one remarkable career, but two. At 17, she made her Carnegie Hall debut in New York to critical acclaim. But the hothousing of her intensive musical training had made playing the violin painful for her, psychologically and physically. She longed to escape it, and escape she did, giving her Hungarian minders the slip and eloping with an American writer, William Woods. They married in 1940, had three daughters and moved to the UK, where they set up home in Dorset.
In her late 30s, she found her second career in the violin, this time as a teacher. Reflecting on the anxieties and aches and pains that had afflicted her – and so many professional string players – she developed an approach to violin playing that drew inspiration from the freedom and joy of the Gypsy violinists of her youth.
As a violin teacher, she wrote several books, gave workshops internationally and her 1961 book, A New Approach to Violin Playing, came to be widely admired. In 2002, she was appointed OBE for her services to music.
Kató had a passion for life and a sprightly sense of fun. She read and travelled widely and maintained into old age a playful imagination. An indomitable spirit, she continued teaching until the final weeks of her life.
I recall visiting a masterclass she gave in Oxford at the age of 90. She was on her feet for two hours, energetically putting her students through their paces. I approached her at the end and remarked that she must be very tired. “No,” she replied emphatically. “They are tired.”
Her first marriage ended in divorce, and in 1971 Kató married Tim Millard-Tucker, a design engineer. He died in 2000. In addition to her daughters, Susanna, Pamela and Kate, Kató is survived by six grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
