This channel is the re-establishment of previous channels that have been sadly terminated.
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Elena Gerhardt--mezzo-soprano
Conraad Vos--piano
1927
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"Elena Gerhardt (11 November 1883 – 11 January 1961) was a German mezzo-soprano singer associated with the singing of German classical lieder, of which she was considered one of the great interpreters. She left Germany for good to live in London in October 1934.
Elena Gerhardt was born at Connewitz near Leipzig, the daughter of a Leipzig restaurateur. She studied at the Leipzig Conservatory from 1899 to 1903, first with Professor Carl Rebling and then with Marie Hedmondt (d. 1941), who remained her friend and vocal adviser for many years. After a year of only technical study, she began work on operatic roles, such as Cherubino, Dorabella, the Mignon of Ambroise Thomas and Hermann Goetz's Katharina, interspersed with lieder. She won the Carl Reinecke Scholarship. Leipzig provided many opportunities to hear international artists and to hear the early masters.
In 1902, Arthur Nikisch became director of the Leipzig Conservatory, and approved her to sing publicly in Leipzig, which she first did in November 1902: he also gave her a solo in Franz Liszt's "Choruses from Herder's Entfesselter Prometheus" (S. 69). On graduating in 1903 and with many engagements, she mentioned her wish to give a lieder recital, and Nikisch offered to be her accompanist, their first (victorious) performance being at the Kaufhaus in Leipzig on her twentieth birthday. Concert engagements poured in, and she sang lieder in almost every university town as supporting artist to names such as Eugène Ysaÿe, Teresa Carreño and Max Reger. By 1905 she made her first appearances (with Nikisch) in Hamburg and Berlin (the Bechsteinhall), and in Berlin made the friendship of Richard Strauss. From summer 1905 she spent holidays with the Nikisch family near Ostend.
Gerhardt made her American debut at the Carnegie Hall in January 1912, with Paula Hegner, and was then in Cincinnati and Philadelphia with Leopold Stokowski (singing the Wesendonck Lieder), and with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Max Fiedler, before finally combining there with Nikisch and the London Symphony Orchestra tour. T
Between the wars
In early 1920, she made a prolonged tour of Spain with Paula Hegner, and later that year to the USA again, where her collaboration with the model accompanist Coenraad V. Bos began. This partnership was renewed in the winter season of 1921-22 in New York. In March 1922 (soon after the death of Nikisch) she braved the return to London (Queen's Hall) with Paula Hegner, where her German art was received with an ovation. That was the start of an unbroken tie with England, which later became her home. The following years saw annual winter tours in USA (and the Pacific Coast from San Francisco to Vancouver in 1925), with extensive tours in UK, Europe and Germany. There were further Spanish tours, including one in winter 1928 with Bos.
In 1928, she met and fell in love with Dr Fritz Kohl, Director of Administration of the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk in Leipzig, and they married in November 1932. In London she reappeared before the Royal Philharmonic Society in January 1931, under John Barbirolli, to perform Wolf songs with orchestral accompaniment, and Mahler's Kindertotenlieder. Her Hugo Wolf Song Society recordings were made in 1932. Following Hitler's rise to power, Kohl was arrested and imprisoned, not being released until June 1935, the only one of the German Broadcasting Directors to be acquitted by the Reichsgericht in Leipzig. With the help of Landon Ronald at the Guildhall School of Music, Elena meanwhile got a foothold in London in 1934, and after a last visit to Bayreuth to see Strauss conduct Parsifal ('It was no longer Richard Wagner's Bayreuth, but Hitler's'[2]), London became the settled home of the couple. Over the following years, as the storm gathered, Elena gave recitals in the Netherlands, France and Britain, often with Gerald Moore accompanying, and developed a circle of singing pupils.
Late career
In 1946, when the BBC Third Programme (i.e., Radio 3, the classical music station) was inaugurated, she gave three broadcasts, including lieder recitals and talks about her career and the interpretation of Winterreise. She also recorded Schumann's Frauenliebe und -leben in that year. She made a broadcast of Brahms's songs in May 1947. That was soon after her formal retirement from the platform in March 1947. Her husband Dr Kohl died in May 1947 and the remainder of her professional life was devoted to teaching in London, where one of her earliest pupils was Marina de Gabaráin.
Gerhardt was one of the very great interpreters of German lieder, a singer who made her career almost entirely in this genre. She published her autobiography in 1953.
She died on 11 January 1961 aged 77, in London. Wikipedia (edited)
