David Blum; Conductor, Author of Musician Profiles

David Blum, an internationally noted conductor and author who organized his first chamber orchestra when he was a Los Angeles teenager, died Friday. He was 62.

Blum, known for his profiles of musicians, died of cancer at the Evergreen Hospice in Kirkland, Wash., said his wife, Sara. Blum, who worked in Europe for 20 years, had lived in the Seattle area for the last decade.

Born and brought up in Los Angeles, Blum at age 17 organized the Young Artists Chamber Orchestra, which performed his composition “Tone Poem to Cyrano de Bergerac” in concert at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. Blum also conducted the group in pieces by Handel and Mozart.

“As a tribute to Mr. Blum and his spirit of enterprise, let it be said that all was very well indeed,” a Times music critic said of the 1952 concert. “The conductor knew the music; he possesses a nice baton technique which, minus a few awkward gestures, could soon be excellent; he had good command of the orchestra in eliciting dynamics and phrasing, and, last but not at all least, he seems to be a really musical fellow.”

As for Blum’s composition, the critic disparaged its length but credited the young composer with “a very lively musical imagination which, to the good of his music, he does not try to keep in check.”

Eventually renaming his group the David Blum Chamber Orchestra, Blum continued conducting concerts at the Wilshire Ebell and elsewhere in Los Angeles, featuring such soloists as Lukas Foss and Andre Previn. He studied composition, conducting and violin in Los Angeles and then moved to New York to study at the Juilliard School of Music.

In 1961, Blum organized the Esterhazy Orchestra in New York City, modeling it on an orchestra that Haydn led at the European estate of Prince Esterhazy. The orchestra’s recordings of Haydn and other 18th century composers for Vanguard Classics earned international acclaim.

Eight years later, Blum moved to Switzerland as music director of the Lausanne Symphony Orchestra and the Geneva Symphony Orchestra. He was a popular guest conductor and recording conductor in Europe with such groups as the English Chamber Orchestra and Berlin Radio Orchestra.

Blum was also well known internationally as a writer, profiling performers for the New Yorker and writing several books from notes he compiled during conversations, rehearsals and other encounters with noted musicians. Among his books were “Casals and the Art of Interpretation,” “The Art of Quartet Playing: The Guarneri Quartet in Conversation With David Blum” and “Paul Tortelier: A Self-Portrait in Conversation With David Blum.”

In addition to his wife, Blum is survived by their two children, Pamina and Ardan Michel.