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Herbert Baumel, 90, violinist and 'Fiddler's' fiddler

Herbert Baumel was a 1942 graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and a violinist with the Philadelphia Orchestra during World War II.

Herbert Baumel was a 1942 graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and a violinist with the Philadelphia Orchestra during World War II.

But more people may have heard him play because of the year he spent performing less classical music.

As concertmaster for the original 1964 Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof, Mr. Baumel was the orchestra-pit source of the onstage fiddler's fiddling.

Because he performed during the 12 months of the Broadway run, his is the sound on the original cast recording.

On Thursday, April 22, Mr. Baumel, 90, concertmaster with the Philadelphia Opera Company from 1940 to 1942 and a first violinist with the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1942 to 1945, died of coronary artery disease at his home in Yonkers, N.Y.

Fiddler put him into another spotlight.

An entry in the archives of President Lyndon B. Johnson at the University of Texas states that in January 1965 - during his months with Fiddler - Mr. Baumel was the solo violinist for Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev at Johnson's inauguration gala.

Again and again, Mr. Baumel switched from pop to classical.

In 1965, he left Fiddler to teach at Oregon State University, conduct its orchestra, and lead its faculty string quartet.

In 1969, the New York Times reported the safe return of Mr. Baumel's chamber music trio from a tour of Southern colleges. In those days, that was news.

"It could be the first integrated small chamber group to take to the road and in the South at that," critic Raymond Ericson wrote.

Though Mr. Baumel told Ericson that friends had warned about "some real trouble from Southern whites or black militants or both," there was none.

Mr. Baumel's African American colleagues in the Baumel-Booth-Smith Trio were pianist Alan Booth and cellist Patrick Smith.

His violin work was first recognized, Mr. Baumel wrote to The Inquirer in 1965, when the New York Music Week Association awarded him its silver medal in 1928.

The group then awarded him its gold medal in 1929, the year he turned 10.

His daughter Susan said Mr. Baumel was born in New York City but he did not attend high school.

Instead, he studied violin on a scholarship at the Mannes College of Music in Manhattan from 1933 to 1935 and graduated from the Curtis Institute in 1942.

In between, he recalled in a resume, "I toured with Leopold Stokowski in his All-American Youth Orchestra for its South American and U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico tours in the summer of 1940 and 1941."

After receiving two Fulbright grants to conduct in Rome and Siena from 1954 to 1956, Mr. Baumel was a member from 1964 to 1966 of a three-person national screening committee for Fulbright grants given to string musicians.

In between those two classical music stints, his resume reported, he was concertmaster of the original Broadway productions of Fiorello! (1959) and She Loves Me (1963).

Ever on the move, Mr. Baumel had concertmaster work that ranged from the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Philharmonic (1945-48) to the New York City Opera Company (1948-49) to the Orquesta Sinfonica Venezuela in Caracas (1949-50).

His daughter said he retired in 1984.

In addition to her, Mr. Baumel is survived by his wife of 40 years, Joan; son Samuel; a brother; and his former wife, Rachel Bail. A daughter, Mary Elizabeth, died in 1968.

Services were observed at Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, N.Y., on Friday, April 23.