Leo Blech

As a German composer and conductor, Leo Blech earned recognition for his readings of Wagner, Verdi, and Bizet's Carmen. Clarity and sensitivity in his podium manner, together with his own operas, earned him particular esteem. Born in Aachen in 1871, he obtained his earliest musical training at the Berlin University of the Arts, where Ernst Rudorff taught him piano and Woldemar Bargiel taught him composition. After finishing those studies he sustained himself through employment in sales. In 1893 he became conductor at Aachen's Stadttheater and simultaneously studied composition with Engelbert Humperdinck. From 1899 to 1906 he held the conductorship of the Neues Deutsches Theater in Prague, after which he joined the conducting staff of Berlin's Royal Opera House. He advanced to Generalmusikdirektor in 1913 and remained in that post until 1923, when he was named artistic director of the Deutsches Opernhaus. He conducted the Berlin Volksoper in 1924 and led the Vienna Volksoper in 1925. The next year he returned to Berlin to assume the conductorship of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, where he remained for twelve highly successful years. Nazi authorities compelled his departure from Germany in 1937; he fled to Riga and took the post of conductor at the Latvian National Opera. Four years later, following the Nazi seizure of Riga, Hitler's second in command, aware of Blech's standing as a distinguished German conductor, issued a visa that permitted him to reach Sweden despite his Jewish background. Upon arriving in Stockholm he began conducting the Stockholm Royal Opera and continued there until after World War II. He returned to Berlin in 1949 and directed the Städtische Oper until his retirement in 1953. Blech died in Berlin in 1955. Several recordings document his work, most notably the 1926 account of Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61 with Fritz Kreisler.