Harry Blech

The British conductor and violinist HARRY BLECH was born in London in 1910. His parents were Polish. At the age of nine he began to play the violin and made such rapid progress that after two years he won a scholarship to study with Sarah Fennings at Trinity College of Music. This was followed by further study with Otakar Ševčík in Czechoslovakia and with Arthur Catterall in Manchester. After playing in the Hallé Orchestra, he joined the newly formed BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1930 and formed the Blech String Quartet in 1933. This became sufficiently popular to enable him to leave the BBC Symphony in 1936. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939 Blech joined the Royal Air Force and played in the RAF’s band based in Uxbridge. When the band’s conductor was absent on one occasion Blech took over the baton and was such a success that he was soon invited by Dame Myra Hess to present concerts of wind music at her National Gallery concerts, in which he directed the specially formed London Wind Players with colleagues from the RAF band. Near the end of the war, he was approached by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with the prospect of a job as an associate conductor. Feeling he needed more direct experience he formed the London Symphonic Players whose first concert in 1946 was a great success.