Charles Gerhardt (conductor)

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Charles Allan Gerhardt (February 6, 1927, Detroit - February 22, 1999, Redding, California) was a conductor, record producer, and arranger.

Gerhardt grew up in Little Rock, where he studied the piano at age five and composition at age nine. He studied music and engineering at several colleges including the University of Illinois, the University of Southern California, and the College of William and Mary. He also studied piano privately and at the Juilliard School. His formal education was interrupted by World War II, during which he served in the Navy in the Aleutians as a chaplain's assistant.

For a time, he was a clerk at the Record Hunter on Lexington Avenue in New York City. Between 1951 and 1955 he worked on the technical side of RCA Victor records. At first, this role consisted of transferring 78 rpm recordings of Enrico Caruso and Artur Schnabel to tape, including removing scratches preparatory to LP reissue. He also assisted at sessions for Kirsten Flagstad, Vladimir Horowitz, William Kapell, Wanda Landowska, and Zinka Milanov. In 1954, he worked with Leopold Stokowski and the NBC Symphony Orchestra on the experimental stereophonic recording of ballet suites from Gian Carlo Menotti’s Sebastian and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. He also became RCA's liason with the company's most important artist, namely Arturo Toscanini, in the conductor’s last years. It was Toscanini who encouraged him to study conducting.

For five years Gerhardt worked at Westminster Records in New York. With Westminster struggling (the company filed for bankruptcy in December 1959), he switched to recording pop singers including Eddie Fischer. His great opportunity as a producer came with a call from RCA’s classical head George Marek, offering an opportunity to produce recordings for Reader's Digest in England.

In 1960 he began to produce records for RCA and Reader’s Digest. His partner was the legendary recording engineer Kenneth Wilkinson of Decca Records (then RCA's affiliate in Europe). This was the beginning of a partnership that lasted through 4,000 sessions over 30 years. Their first major project was a 12-LP set for Reader’s Digest Recordings: “A Festival of Light Classical Music”. Over two million copies of this set were sold in a few years. This was followed in 1961 by the Reader’s Digest set of Beethoven Symphonies with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by René Leibowitz.

One of Gerhardt’s favorite productions was the 1964 release “Treasury of Great Music”, another 12-LP set for Reader’s Digest. This featured the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by such eminent figures as Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Antal Doráti, Jascha Horenstein, Rudolf Kempe, Josef Krips, Charles Munch, Georges Prêtre, and Fritz Reiner.

The Reader’s Digest projects created so much recording work that there was need for another orchestra and conductor in London. Together with Sidney Sax, he formed an orchestra of top London orchestral and freelance musicians in 1964 for use in his recording sessions. He began to record this group in January 1964. The orchestra was incorporated as the National Philharmonic Orchestra in 1970 and Gerhardt himself conducted it in standard repertory, contemporary works, and film score music.

Gerhardt had received some training in conducting, as well as advice from Jascha Horenstein. His 1967 conducting of the so-called “RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra” (which was actually the National Philharmonic Orchestra) of Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2 (The Romantic) garnered the praise of the composer.

One particularly successful set Gerhardt conducted with the National Philharmonic Orchestra included the 14 LPs of the Classic Film Scores series for RCA, issued 1972-1978. This started with the 1972 release “The Sea Hawk: The Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The whole series was notable especially for Gerhardt's own, extremely careful, preparation of the scores. Recordings were made in the acoustically outstanding Kingsway Hall and engineered by Kenneth Wilkinson. The producer of the series was George Korngold, the composer’s son. The series continued with albums devoted to Max Steiner, Miklós Rózsa, Franz Waxman, Alfred Newman, Dimitri Tiomkin, Bernard Hermann and John Williams as well as albums devoted to music in the films of Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and Errol Flynn. A number of additional pieces were recorded but remain in the vaults.

The Classic Film Scores: Album Title	Released	U.S. LP Number
The Sea Hawk: The Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold	1972	LSC 3330
Now Voyager: The Classic Film Scores of Max Steiner	1973	ARL1-0136
Classic Film Scores for Bette Davis	1973	ARL1-0183
Captain from Castile: The Classic Film Scores of Alfred Newman	1973	ARL1-0184
Elizabeth and Essex: The Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold	1973	ARL1-0185
Casablanca: Classic Film Scores for Humphrey Bogart	1974	ARL1-0422
Gone with the Wind	1974	ARL1-0452
Citizen Kane: The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Hermann	1974	ARL1-0707
Sunset Boulevard: The Classic Film Scores of Franz Waxman	1974	ARL1-0708
Spellbound: The Classic Film Scores of Miklós Rózsa	1975	ARL1-0911
Captain Blood: Classic Film Scores for Errol Flynn.	1975	ARL1-0912
Lost Horizon: The Classic Film Scores of Dimitri Tiomkin	1976	ARL1-1669
Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind	1978	ARL1-2698
The Spectacular World of Classic Film Scores	1978	ARL1-2792

Another recording he conducted for RCA was flautist James Galway’s “Annie’s Song” album with the National Philharmonic Orchestra, which reached number three on the British charts in 1978.

Gerhardt retired from RCA in 1986 but continued to work as a free-lance producer until 1997. He never appeared in public as a conductor, refusing all invitations due to his desire to remain private.

Charles Gerhardt moved to Redding, California in 1991. He was diagnosed with brain cancer in late November 1998 and died from complications of brain surgery. He is buried at St. Joseph Catholic Cemetery in Redding.

[edit] References

• Benson, Robert E. "Classic Film Scores" [1]
• Benson, Robert E. “A four-decade friendship with Charles Gerhardt” [2] (includes numerous photographs and anecdotes about Gerhardt)
• Burlingame, Jon and Doug Galloway, “Charles Allan Gerhardt”, Variety, March 4, 1999.
• Kozinn, Alan “Charles Allan Gerhardt, 72, Record Producer and Conductor” New York Times, March 1, 1999, page 19.
• Obituary, The Independent (London), April 2, 1999.
• Obituary, Redding Record Searchlight (CA) - February 24, 1999, page B2.