Gerle, Robert

Robert Gerle (1924-2005) was a noted concert violinist, conductor, and professor based in the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore metropolitan areas during the last thirty years of his career. Born in Abbazia, Italy, now Opatija, Croatia, of Hungarian parents, Gerle began study of the violin at a young age, graduating from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music and the Hungarian National Conservatory of Music. In 1942 he won the Hubay prize for violin performance.

During World War II, Gerle, who was from a Jewish family, spent several years in a labor camp in Budapest. With the approach of the Soviets, he escaped in late 1944, only to be found by Soviet soldiers in January 1945 hiding with 26 other Hungarian Jews in a crawl space over a music professor's apartment. An article published in the New York Times in 1958, recounts the story of the ensuing interaction. The Soviets suspected the group of Hungarians of firing on them and lined them up in front of a firing squad. Apparently on a whim the officer in charge, noting the violin case in Gerle's hand asked him to play a work by Tschaikovsky. The violinist's performance was sufficient to convince the officer that Gerle was a musician, not a soldier. All 26 men were released.

Following the war, Gerle played concert engagements in New York and London, often eliciting praise from critics for his flawless technique. His performances of Bach's Chaconne for solo violin and Heinrich Biber's violin sonatas were particularly renown. He made a recording of the complete Beethoven violin and piano sonatas with his second wife, pianist Maryland Neely, for the Westminster label. A video presentation of the recording won an Emmy Award.

In 1972, Gerle began the orchestra program at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, where he remained for two decades. He also taught at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Mannes College of Music in New York, and The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Critics in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area praised Gerle's performances with the Friday Morning Music Club and Washington Sinfonia. The Friday Morning Music Club, known principally as an amateur group of older women before Gerle's tenure, came to be admired for their musicality and zest in performance.

From the guide to the Robert Gerle Papers, 1873-1992, 1920-1960, (Special Collections in Performing Arts)