Charles Gerhardt (conductor)

Charles Allan Gerhardt (February 6, 1927 – February 22, 1999) was an American conductor, record producer, and arranger.

Gerhardt grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, 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 liaison with Arturo Toscanini, in the conductor's last years. It was Toscanini who encouraged him to study conducting.

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