Obituary: Ronald Masin (1937–2025)

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The Dutch violinist Ronald Rudolf Masin died on 5 November 2025, surrounded by his family, following a short but intense illness. He was 88.

Masin was born on 9 August 1937 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to Czech-Dutch parentage. He began his violin studies at an early age during war in Europe at the Rotterdam Music Conservatory.

After the Second World War, Masin moved to South Africa with his family, where lived in Johannesburg from age nine to eighteen. He then moved abroad to study at the Royal Music Conservatory in Brussels, Belgium, under the tutelage of Hungarian violinist André Gertler. He received violin and chamber music diplomas with the highest distinction in 1962.

During his time in Brussels, he met his future wife, the Hungarian violinist Maria Kelemen, who had received a Ford scholarship to study in Brussels. They married in 1962.

Masin became concertmaster of the Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (now Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra) in 1963, where he remained in the role until 1984. During that time he worked with renowned musicians including Yehudi Menuhin, David Oistrakh, Henryk Szeryng, Sviatoslav Richter, Bella Davidovich, Ida Haendel, Herbert Blomstedt, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Kirill Kondrashin, Yevgeny Svetlanov, among others.

Additionally, he was a founding member in 1966 of the Kern Ensemble piano quartet with his wife, cellist Bob Reuling and pianist Rinus Groot, which performed numerous concerts worldwide until the late 1970s. They recorded for the EMI label and commissioned and performed works by many contemporary composers. Masin and Kelemen co-authored the book Violin Technique: The Natural Way.

As a solo violinist, Masin performed with numerous international orchestras and recorded pieces written for him by composers Sandor Szokolay, Hans Kox, John Buckley, Eric Sweeney and Raymond Deane.

Masin held the post of head of the strings department at Cape Town University in South Africa from 1984. He and his family later moved to Dublin, Ireland, in 1988, where he became senior lecturer (later professor) at the Conservatory of Music and Drama at the Dublin Institute of Technology (now TU Dublin Conservatoire).

Remaining in the post until the age of 65, Masin then became teacher and mentor of Kelemen’s Young European Strings School of Music. Having inspired five generations of students, many of them went on to become professional violinists, violists and cellists in leading orchestras worldwide.

In 1995, he founded the Music Instrument Fund of Ireland (MIFI), a charity organisation that provides high-quality instruments for yound musicians.

’Ronald taught and played right up until the day he was hospitalised – videos by his students show him performing everything from Béla Bartók’s Solo Sonata, Johannes Brahms Violin Concerto right through to Kreutzer Etudes,’ Masin’s daughter, Gwendolyn Masin, told The Strad.

Masin is survived by Kelemen, his children Patrick and Gwendolyn and their partners, and six grandchildren.