Suzanne Bloch, 94; Musician, Teacher and Early Music Specialist

Suzanne Bloch, 94, a musician and teacher who worked to expand interest in early music, died Jan. 29 in New York City.

The daughter of conductor Ernest Bloch, she was born in Geneva and moved to the United States with her family in the early 1900s.

At an early music concert in Paris in the mid-1920s, she heard the lute, an ancestor of the guitar. Taken with the delicate sound of the instrument, she studied music in Paris and Berlin over the next decade, eventually learning other early music instruments such as the recorder, and began her professional career in England in 1935. She made her American debut a year later at Carnegie Hall.

Bloch often played chamber music with noted scientists, including Albert Einstein. But as Bloch’s sister, the late photojournalist Lucienne Bloch, once recounted, Einstein’s efforts were not always successful. “Suzy would give the downbeat, but Einstein always came in late,” Lucienne Bloch wrote. “Finally, in an exasperated tone, she turned to him and said, ‘Mr. Einstein, can’t you count?’”