| Biography | Robert Gerle (1 April 1924, Abbazia, Italy [Now Opatija, Croatia] - 29 October 2005, Hyattsville, USA) was an American violinist and music teacher of Hungarian origin.
Born to Hungarian parents, Gerle earned a master's degree at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest and studied at the National Conservatory of Music there before he began a career as a performer. During World War II, he was imprisoned in a labor camp because he was Jewish, but he escaped and hid in his teacher's apartment in Budapest. He was one of about 20 people hiding in the apartment's crawl spaces when Russian soldiers raided it in 1945. Suspected as Nazi snipers, the group was ordered to stand before a firing squad, and, according to stories told of this incident, Mr. Gerle carried his violin with him. Seeing the instrument, a Russian officer told him to play a piece by Tchaikovsky, which Mr. Gerle did. It convinced the officer that he and the others were not Nazis, and all of them were set free.
Gerle moved to Paris, then to Luxembourg, where he was staff soloist with Radio Luxembourg for a brief time. He moved to the United States in 1950 to accept a fellowship at the University of Illinois. Through the 1960s, he performed with orchestras in the United States and Europe and had a lively career as a recording artist, performing works by Beethoven, Samuel Barber, and others. In 1970, he and pianist Marilyn Neeley won an Emmy Award for a series of televised performances of the complete Beethoven violin and piano sonatas. The couple married the same year. |