Vilem Tausky, a leading light of postwar British musical life, was one of the last direct links to the grand, middle-European tradition that did so much to enrich Western culture during the latter part of the 19th and early years of the 20th century. His credentials were impeccable. His father, a doctor, was Czech and his mother, an opera singer under Mahler, Viennese. His uncles were the popular operetta composers Leo, Siegfried and Richard Fall. His teachers included Suk and Janacek. And he could even trace his musical ancestry back to Dvorak himself — via the composer’s daughter, Magda, whose singing he used to accompany on the piano, and widow, Anna, who was a regular visitor to the family home.

His own irrepressible enthusiasm for music was galvanised by the brass bands that he heard every Sunday, and by the age of seven he was already a proficient pianist. It was small wonder, then, that the law studies that he had begun at Brno University were shortlived, thanks to a cello sonata he had written at the age of 15 securing him at place at the Janacek Conservatoire in Brno. From there he graduated with a Symfonietta for full Orchestra, which won him a state prize and study at the Prague Meisterschule.

He was still an 18-year-old student when he began his fruitful association with the Brno Opera House and only 19 when he conducted his first opera, Turandot, with the young Zinka Milanov, the first of many operas under his baton which included, at Brno, Eugene Onegin, Il Trovatore, Rigoletto, The Czar’s Bride, The Snow Maiden and Boris Godunov, with Chaliapin. He was also involved in ballet performances, produced an orchestration of Les Sylphides which is still used at Brno today, and met Richard Strauss, in town to conduct Rosenkavalier.

Tausky’s Brno years climaxed in 1934, when, in addition to directing the premiere of Dvorak’s recently discovered First Symphony, he participated in a complete cycle of Janacek’s works, as conductor of The Cunning Little Vixen and repetiteur for From the House of the Dead.

At the same time he was making creative headway, thanks to a collaboration with Weinberger, the composer of Schwanda the Bagpiper. By the age of 24 Tausky had seen three works of his own on the Brno stage – Marcella, the first operetta to be broadcast in Czechoslovakia, Keep Smiling, selected for the Prague New Year’s Eve performance in 1934, and The Girl in Blue, premiered on the eve of the German occupation — and a projected operetta on Bata the shoe manufacturer abandoned, owing to the unhappy fate suffered by its Jewish librettist Fritz Löhner.

Tausky was more fortunate, however, and with help from the opera house’s director, Jirikovsky, who was dispatching authentic Moravian costumes to Paris for the première of Jenufa, and a letter from the principal of the Russian Paris Conservatoire, Tcherepnin (whose opera Vanka Tausky had worked on), a French visa, collected from the local Gestapo headquarters, was obtained, and Tausky boarded the night express from Prague, arriving safely in Paris on April 14, 1939. Jirikovsky was not so lucky, and was executed for his liberal views.

In Paris Tausky worked for a few months with the Ballets Russes in Monte Carlo, until he left to join the Free Czechoslovak Forces. In September he was appointed the bandmaster of a military orchestra consisting of instruments obtained from the Paris Police by Martinu. The great Czech composer wrote the Field Mass for him, but its premiere was postponed because of the fall of France.

Having arrived in South Wales on a Yugoslav coal ship, Tausky immediately threw himself into British musical life. He arranged Czech carols, composed marches, conducted concerts with the London Philharmonic and Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras and a glittering roster of singers and instrumentalists, including Moiseiwitch, Solomon, Eileen Joyce, Louis Kentner, Joan Hammond, Nancy Evans, Heddle Nash, Dennis Brain, Cyril Smith and Harriet Cohen, and mounted concert performances of such neglected Czech operas as The Kiss, Libuse, Rusalka, Jacobin and The Two Widows. He was, apparently, the first foreigner in 100 years to conduct the Band of the Coldstream Guards.

But his muse, although modest, was not neglected. He wrote incidental music for T. S. Eliot’s East Coker and a film history of the Czech Army in exile, as well as concert works: a second cello sonata, a suite for violin and piano, Ballade for cello and piano, Fantasia da Burlesca for violin and orchestra, and Coventry: a Meditation for Strings, wrought from the ruins of the blitzed city and premiered during Myra Hess’s lunchtime concerts at the National Gallery. It was recently revived, in Coventry itself, on Remembrance Day in 2000, two years after he had signed off as a composer with a Serenade for Strings.

After the war Tausky resumed his operatic career, to become a key figure in the British opera renaissance. He was appointed musical director of the Carl Rosa Opera Company, debuting with Tosca at the Wimbledon Theatre in the November, with Joan Hammond and his compatriot Otakar Kraus as Scarpia.

He remained with the troupe for three years, conducting many of the greatest British singers of the day, including Gladys Parr, Tudor Davies, Ruth Packer, Gwen Catley, Norman Allin and Victoria Elliott, in Madama Butterfly, Rigoletto, La Bohème, Faust, Il Trovatore, The Tales of Hoffman, Carmen, The Flying Dutchman, Cav & Pag and the English premiere of Smetana’s The Kiss.

Opera continued to occupy the centre of Tausky’s professional life. He joined the National School of Opera, founded by Joan Cross and Anne Wood, remained there until 1967 and helped to train many notable artists, such as Ava June, Marie Collier, Inia Te Wiata, Johanna Peters, April Cantelo and the D’Oyly Carte’s Kenneth Sandford. At the Royal Opera House he conducted The Queen of Spades with Edith Coates in the title role, Tosca with Otakar Kraus, Il Trovatore with Gré Brouwenstijn and Salome with Ljuba Welitsch and toured with the company.

He was an early musical director of the Welsh Opera Company (now known as Welsh National Opera) and performed with it during its visit to Sadler’s Wells in 1954.

In July 1953 he joined Sadler’s Wells itself and conducted his first opera there: Hansel and Gretel with Marion Studholme and Anna Pollak. New and rare repertoire which he championed included Lennox Berkely’s Nelson, Il Trittico, Andrea Chénier, Rusalka and Malcolm Williamson’s The Violins of St Jacques. The following year, at the invitation of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, he began an association with the English Opera Group Aldeburgh Festival in 1954.

Meanwhile, Tausky did not neglect his concert work — both serious and light. After the war, he held various BBC appointments, in Belfast, Glasgow and Manchester, where he worked with Benny Hill, Frankie Howerd, Elsie and Doris Waters, Morecambe and Wise, Tessie O’Shea, Jimmy Edwards and Gracie Fields. In addition, he conducted new British music, a complete cycle of Dvorak’s nine symphonies, Bruckner’s rarely heard early symphonies and, in 1955, all six of Martinu ’s symphonies in celebration of the composer’s sixtieth birthday. Later, he was appointed conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra, remaining with them until 1967, during which time his Friday Night is Music Night and Friday Night is Seaside Night became hugely popular successes.

Ever keen to share his love of music with others, he enjoyed a rewarding teaching career, centred at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where for 20 years he served as director of opera and head of conducting. He also conducted brass bands, Sunday night Viennese music concerts at the Albert Hall and continued to promote his beloved Czech opera.

In 1974 he was invited back to the Czech Republic to conduct operas in Brno, Ostrava and Olomouc and the following year he went to the Slovak Republic. Later, at the age of 84, he gave the British premiere of The Brandenburgers in Bohemia.

Vilem Tausky’s honours included the Czech Military Cross, appointment as CBE, the fellowship of the Guildhall School of Music, a medal from the Martinu Institute in Prague, the Czech Government’s Jan Masaryk Gratias Agip Prize, and a gold medal and honorary doctorate from Prague’s Charles University.

Two books, Vilem Tausky Tells his Story and Leos Janacek: Leaves from his Life, co-authored with his wife, were published in 1979 and 1982. His history of operetta remains unpublished, but his Sadler’s Wells recordings of highlights from Strauss and Lehar operas, appropriately enough on the Classics for Pleasure label, happily remain in the catalogue.

Vilem Tausky, CBE, composer and conductor, was born on July 20, 1910. He died on March 16, 2004, aged 93.