“Alban Gerhardt brilliantly supported the jurors' confidence in his musicality and his instrumental command…it was Gerhardt’s show, after all: his account of the Kodaly Solo Sonata was perhaps the most exciting I have ever heard. It had a commanding virtuosity comparable to Janos Starker’s, and added a youthful, daredevil bigness and energy that went right to the work’s -and the audience’s- jugular…The abandon in this last formal offering attained a splendid savagery…”

“…Gerhardt plunged into music fearlessly and performed it with consistent excellence…His stamina struck me as phenomenal... (His) Beethoven and Brahms playing was memorable for its fine singing tone and even finer musical instincts…”

“…(the concert) climaxed with the CCO debut of a superb cellist…Mr. Gerhardt is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant cellists of his generation...The sold-out crowd leapt to its feet at its conclusion. He played his Guadagnini cello with an intensity and a deep-throated, gutsy tone that compelled the listeners, and at times recalled that of Mstislav Rostropovich…The cadenza was a tour de force of clear counterpoint and rhapsodic expression…Expect to hear much more from this young virtuoso...”

Gerhardt, a 25-year-old cellist from Berlin, captivated an audience that nearly filled Memorial Hall and shouted for more after his performance of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No.1. And they got it, with Gerhardt adding a solo encore at Lockhart’s suggestion. The concerto was a delight, with a swaying Gerhardt- playing from memory- almost in a world of his own. The hall was so rapt during the third movement that children could be heard playing in nearby Washington Park…”

“…Boisvert and Gerhardt made a fascinating team at Friday's coffee concert, partly because Boisvert's refined elegance and Gerhardt's bolder, more incisive style were not a natural fit. In the stormy allegro, Gerhardt dominated, but you could hear these two sensitive players slowly find common ground. In the andante the pair delineated the poetry in perfectly balanced octaves and captured the controlled intensity of the deceptively virtuoso entanglements. The finale was full of high-spirited Gypsy energy.”

“…this time with the German cellist Alban Gerhardt and music director Neeme Jarvi on the podium. The result was stunning. The two soloists melded color, phrasing and rhythm like old pals. Boisvert's characteristic elegance provided a fetching foil to Gerhardt's fulsome tone, and the DSO buoyed the twosome on sparkling waves of sound. At the conclusion, Boisvert's orchestra mates skipped the usual tribute of rapping bows on music stands and applauded her openly. Gerhardt, who richly deserved a share of that ovation - much amplified and prolonged from the audience -- cheerfully deferred to his impromptu partner.”

“...Alban Gerhardt, the guest artist, allowed not a single dull moment in Dvorak's cello concerto. His performance, full of character and physical accents, was absorbing from start to finish. Coming on strong in the first movement, Gerhardt occasionally got a brisk step ahead of the orchestra. But still he kept the principal themes distinct, one resolute and the other a long phrase lovingly shaped...In a tender, but driven second movement, Gerhardt gave way to mellow tones in the horns, and in the third, he leaned in to share musical statements with the concertmaster. This was a virtuoso performance. Gerhardt tread buoyantly through exercise-like patterns and played trills as rapidly as the wings of a hummingbird...”

“...Gerhardt is one of those rare musicians upon whom the gods must have smiled, for not only does musical intensity of the highest order pour forth from his instrument, but his ardor is visible in every gesture and expression while he performs. That unusual gift makes the performance both an inward and an outward odyssey of musical discovery, and in this complex and achingly lyrical work it was extremely affecting....”

“...Der 33jährige Gerhardt spielte die Rokoko-Variationen als das Herzstück des Abends mit jugendlichem Elan gemischt mit tiefem Gefühl, dem Kennzeichen von einem reifenden Talent. Er trug ein rotes Konzerthemd, sein langes, sandfarbenes Haar hing über seine Stirn und er bewegte sich beim Spielen schwingend, während seine Augen geschlossen waren mit intensivster Konzentration...Man hätte eine Nadel auf den Fussboden fallen hören während er in der Kadenz unglaublich lange, vorzügliche hohe Noten hield die so fein wie Silberfäden waren. Auf der anderen Seite holte er dunkles Donnern aus seinem Instrument das mit rundem, vollen Ton, perfekter Intonation und unglaublichem Klangvolumen erklang....”

“The outstanding German cellist, Alban Gerhardt, confirmed the strong impression he made in earlier New York appearances… Once again the intelligence and sheer technical certitude impressed mightily…Gerhardt had a large, extremely focused sound, and an amazing sureness of intonation and seemingly nothing fazes him in regard to brilliance and articulation. There is also a goodly modicum of nuance and color that keeps a certain reminiscence of Feuermann to the fore. In other words, this is the cello playing of a bonafide young lion - a true virtuoso..”

“Spotlight Shines on the Cello in the Land of Jell-O...The Utah Symphony ...played host to exciting young German cellist Alban Gerhardt. Gerhardt’s impassioned performance of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No.1 got 2003 off to a roaring start for the orchestra...Gerhardt, 33, played the concerto’s first movement with enough intensity and momentum to keep listeners on the edges of their seats. He also did a fine job capturing Shostakovich’s sardonic wit...After a haunting second movement, Gerhardt gave a moving soliloquy in the concerto’s lenghty cadenzy, then cranked up the intensity again to finish the piece with an invigorating display of raw urgency...”

Cellist Alban Gerhardt and pianist Rina Dokshitsky returned to the Athenaeum for a joint recital. I last heard them there seven years ago, in a concert so sensational that I still remember virtually every moment of it. Then it was Beethoven, Debussy, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev; this time, the program was Rachmaninov, Kodály, Piazzolla, and Ligeti. But the two artists remain at the top of their fields, and their music-making is still incomparably thrilling.
Kodály - How is it that Gerhardt plays the way he does? Here is my fantasy on this subject. He has been kidnapped by a terrorist who happens to be a lover of the cello. The terrorist forces him to play. He must not only play every work with flawless technique and a strong, expressive tone. No, he must go further. He must penetrate to the essence of each piece of music, performing it as though he were there at the moment of its creation. He must make its language his own. He must experience its passions and its meanings in his blood and in his bones. He must rid himself of everything extraneous: his personality, his private preoccupations, his extramusical associations, the distractions of thoughts, memories, plans, hopes, self. He must become nothing but the music. Otherwise, he will be killed.
That, it seems to me, is the key to Gerhardt’s overwhelming impact. He is playing for his life. The audience is not witnessing a simulacrum of an event but the real thing. And while it is in front of us, there is nothing in the world more important.
The effect of this concentrated commitment was especially potent in Gerhardt’s performance of Kodály’s Sonata for Cello Solo, Opus 8, one of the blockbusters of the cello repertoire. Between Bach’s unaccompanied Cello Suites (dating from around 1720) and the Kodály Opus 8(1915) there is no work of equal consequence that places a single cello center stage and demands from it a far-ranging ‘ indeed, all-encompassing ‘ musical testimony...Gerhardt showed himself a consummate master of the double-stops, the double-stopped trills, the simultaneous bowing and plucking, the sul ponticello sections, the extremes of range, and the virtuosic passage-work demanded by the score. But that was only to be expected. No cellist would dare to play this finger-breaking work in public without having mastered its techniques. (Many cellists ‘ including some of the most eminent ‘ avoid it entirely.) The real problems lie much deeper. What is this piece of music about’ Why does it do the things it does’
Parts of it are filled with great, empty silences. Its impetus often runs down, so that for long stretches it seems to be going nowhere. The first movement is a series of declamatory episodes, held together by an occasional repetition of the initial theme. The second movement, in particular, is phenomenally static, as if time had stopped forever. The more active third movement, with its motoric dance rhythms, constantly seems to end and then start over, with some new textural device. The sonic devices themselves, which exploit the instrument’s possibilities with unprecedented inventiveness and variety, eventually give the impression of clever tricks used for their own sake. The whole work, even in the performances of some of the best cellists, sounds bloated. One of its most fervent exponents, the superb Janos Starker, seems for a considerable while to have agreed with such an assessment, performing the work with significant cuts (although he later changed his mind).
What was most astonishing about Gerhardt’s performance was the way it made all these ‘ apparently quite legitimate ‘ criticisms of the Opus 8 vanish without a trace. When you are playing under threat of death, you barrel through to the truth no matter how much it may have been distorted and obscured. The truth of this sui generis cello sonata lies in its imaginative vision, and all the sound effects, all the structural anomalies, all the deviations from the expected sonata forms are justified by their being in the service of that vision. This is not courtly music, not urban music; it is scarcely civilized music. Its heart is in the wilderness, in the vast rural plains of Hungary. Its prolonged meditations and its outbursts of frenzied energy evolve from the loneliness of the soul in those expanses, a loneliness that is given embodiment in the solitude of the cellist performing the music, without an accompanying piano, without a surrounding orchestra, without collaborators of any kind, forced to depend on his own emotional and introspective resources for all direction, all expression, all meaning.
Understood in this light (and it was Gerhardt’s performance that, for the first time in my experience of the work, made such an understanding possible), Kodály’s Opus 8 has no longeurs; it has profondeurs. Its periods of immobility or of excitement, its bemused paralysis or hectic affirmation, the obsessive yearning of its solitary voice for accompaniment (which it must provide by itself), its circular return to a few impassioned motifs that never are developed yet that seem to become denser and weightier with each repetition, its struggle to reach a culminating validation (trying now this way, now that way, ingeniously experimenting, never giving up) ‘ these are not defects of language or form but the necessary constituents of a type of music that was, at that date, thoroughly new.
... Kodály’s Solo Sonata is more radical in its rejection of traditional principles, and in the interpretive challenges it poses to both performer and listener. Gerhardt’s preternaturally focused intensity in every phrase of the music, including its silences, at once made the listener aware of those challenges and magnificent) transcended them.
Rina Dokshitsky's an artist of the same stamp, something one could hear right at the beginning of the recent Athenaeum program as she joined Gerhardt in an extraordinary performance of Astor Piazzolla’s Le Grand Tango. The Argentinean composer made a career of transforming the tango into semi-serious salon music, using the rhythms and melodic shapes of the popular dance to construct works intended for performance by classical musicians. Some of his fans maintain that Piazzolla did for the tango what Chopin did for the polonaise and the mazurka. That is a preposterous claim, for Piazzolla was a distinctly minor composer, with only one string to his bow. But occasionally he produced a piece with authentic scope, one of which was the cello-and-piano Grand Tango, written for Mstislav Rostropovich.
I had heard this work several times before the Gerhardt concert, played by such fine cellists as Yo-Yo Ma and Rostropovich himself, but, aside from my noting that it was well written for the principal instrument, it had never made much of an impression on me. Gerhardt and Dokshitsky changed all that. Rostropovich’s performances have presented Le Grand Tango as a shapely, lyrical work, full of suavity and nuance. In contrast, Gerhardt and Dokshitsky went at it with a furious rage, evoking the dark atmosphere of violence and sexuality that one finds in some of Borges’s naturalistic stories of ‘the hard-bitten men living on the edge of Buenos Aires before the turn of the century’ (such as the tragic and brutal tale of the brothers Cristian and Eduardo and their woman Juliana).
The musicians’ playing was terrific in the root sense of the word ‘ and the pianist’s eruptions were as powerful as the cellist’s feverish phrasing and roughness of tone. It was a far cry from Rostropovich’s 1996 recording, which seems tediously genteel in comparison, and in which the piano part is treated as mere timid background. At the Athenaeum, the unity of the cellist and the pianist (both technically and temperamentally) was striking, and the evident fact that this was a collaborative enterprise between equals enhanced the unexpected force of the Piazzolla work.
The same balance obtained in their performance of Rachmaninov’s G Minor Sonata, Opus 19. In this grand, late-romantic work, the equality of the two players is built into the score: the keyboard part is as rich (and as difficult) as in much of the composer’s solo piano music, and in no way ‘ structurally or emotionally ‘ does the piano take second place to the cello. The breadth and brilliance of Dokshitsky’s playing made one long to hear her in a solo recital. As for Gerhardt, his Rachmaninov was naturally not as revelatory as his Kodály and Piazzolla had been. No one has ever doubted the quality of the Rachmaninov Cello Sonata, and San Diego concertgoers have encountered wonderful performances of its cello part (David Finckel at Sherwood Auditorium a decade ago, for example.) But it was dazzling to hear the way Gerhardt adapted the tone of his beautiful Guadagnini to Rachmaninov’s passionately expressive style: no Hungarian rusticity or low-life Argentinean dirtiness here, but instead a full, ripe, vibrant sound, which was at the same time vividly focused. Just as Gerhardt had totally identified with the spiritual environment implied by the Kodály Sonata and the Piazzolla Grand Tango, so his playing of the Rachmaninov Sonata projected the composer’s heroic melancholy with profound empathy, yet with no touch of sentimentality...
The two encores Rachmaninov’s Vocalise and Requiebros by Gaspar Cassado offered welcome proof that this deeply serious cellist is capable of gorgeous lyricism and (in the ardent Cassado piece) charm, grace, and a truly Iberian duende. (He and Dokshitsky have recorded an indispensable CD of ‘Spanish’ music: you can’t live without their performance of Ravel’s Habanera, believe me!) Yet even in these brief, audience-friendly, and stylishly played encores, Gerhardt’s concentration never went lax, and he threw himself into them as if his very existence depended on revealing every facet of their true meaning. When Scheherazade tells an anecdote, she gives it her all, for she knows what will happen if she does not. Then as now, it is the unmistakable sign of the great artist.”

...This was an ineffably thrilling, intimate contact with the greatest kind of music-making... Altogether, this was one of the most stunning concerts I have ever attended, of any kind…They were musicians to the core…This means extraordinary intensity at moments of dramatic power, extraordinary lyricism when the score calls for the efflorescence of a singing line, extraordinary rhtyhmic drive..., extraordinary nuances of tone color... It means that at every moment the music is revealed in utter fullness as the kind of music it was meant to be. I have not had time even to mention Gerhardt’s fabulous technique, the magnificence of his sound, the coruscating brilliance of his passage work, his double stops or his indescribably shapely phrasing of a simple tune…”

“…During Haydn's Cello Concerto, Boreyko and the orchestra provided sensitive support to Gerhardt…He conveyed the work's spirited nature, whether in rocketing scales, buoyant melodies or in the chordal intricacies of the cadenza…”

“…yet the evening high points came in performances with cello soloist Alban Gerhardt. Though I had heard him perform chamber music at last year’s SummerFest La Jolla, nothing prepared me for his interpretive abilities as a concerto soloist or his self-depreciating charm in remarks to the audience…In both the Boccherini and Haydn, Gerhardt displayed welcome boldness, clarity and intensity…In the Boccherini Gerhardt excelled at showy mutiple stops, rocketing scales and lyrical outpourings. His Haydn was fast, lean and athletic – a quick sprint to the virtuoso’s finish line. It was ample evidence of Gerhardt’s gifts. Equipped with talent, photogenic looks, a sense of humor and his own Website he seems to epitomize a young musician who’s going places…”

“...German guest artist, Alban Gerhardt, came prefaced by some glowing publicity. It all was proven corret by this splendid artist, with a huge, crisp sound and beautiful phrasing in a near perfect rendition of Tchaikowsky's 'Variations on a Rococo Theme'...The performer's approach to the work showed much sensitivity and a solid technique, making the difficult seem easy. We were all entranced by Gerhardt's achievement. As an encore he played some Bach...<which> was in itself a virtuoso work requiring superb phrasing. Bravo!...”

…we heard the local debut of a young cellist, who is already among the finest of this generation…As a cellist myself, I am not given to awarding superlatives. But Alban Gerhardt played as well as anybody I’ve ever heard – including Leonard Rose, Paul Tortelier, Zara Nelsova, Msistislav Rostropovich, Janos Starker and Bernard Greenhouse in their prime. I myself studied with Aldo Parisot for seven years. Barring the unforeseen tragedy or bizarre circumstances, Gerhardt will be among the finest living cellist of the coming century. Indeed, the proper comparison of Gerhardt to a predecessor may be to Emanuel Feuermann, the brillant virtuoso….Feuermann could play anything, play it musically without ever encountering the idea of technical difficulty, play it with smiling nonchalance. Gerhardt seems able to repeat this phenomenon…From the opening measures of the Brahms, we listerners knew we were facing a master. Gerhardt produces a sound as large as Lynn Harrell’s and his sense of emotional expression within the bounds of musical property seems flawless. His bow arm is seamless and his left hand produced intonation that never faulted a singel time in almost two hours of the toughest cello repertoire…Gerhardt illmuniated its ferocious intensity with tight control, and he received a standing ovation. Moreover, his spoken asides to the audience revealed an artist who isn’t impeded by self/consciousness or affectiation: he enjoys playing music for people. Baby boomers, stand aside. The X’ers are here / and all we can do is applaud and beg for more.”

“It's less often heard than his well-known work for violin, "Symphonie espagnole," perhaps due to its extremely difficult role for the soloist, but this performance was a triumph for Gerhardt. While at times he pushed a little hard on his instrument, rendering the sound a tad rough, his tone was generally limpid and rich, his phrasing musical. Many passages of technical fireworks he carried off with apparent ease and kept them sounding an integral part of the concerto rather than as showy vehicles for himself. Lalo embeds these in the orchestral sound, but though the cello register is low, Gerhardt always remained audible and Jordan kept the orchestra around and with him but never over him. The sparkling slow movement was particularly entrancing.”

“..Jordan was not the only debutante on Thursday evening. The concerto soloist, German-born cellist Alban Gerhardt, was playing for the first time in Seattle. He is only five years older than Jordan, a circumstance that may have contributed to what seemed like an excellent rapport in the Lalo Concerto. Clad in a dark-red shirt with black trousers, Gerhardt played with a great deal of head-tossing...He's an expressive, strong player with an excellent technique, a powerful bow arm, great fingers - and imposing interpretive depth. It's exciting ho hear good new talent...This kind of energy wakes up audiences and players alike, as we ponder the artistic footsteps of a new generation of talent."

“...Guest artist, cellist Alban Gerhardt, certainly helps the celebration along with his outstanding interpretation of Shostakovich's brilliant Cello Concerto No.1. No wonder Gerhardt is fast rising on the concert scene. He gets incredible sounds out the cello...is rife with emotions, from a sort of desperation to a heartbreaking poignancy. No other instrument can capture such a range of emotions as the cello. The third movement (cadenza) was extraordinary, featuring Gerhardt solo in a virtuosic performance. The musician has a deft touch, being able to get thunder out of the instrument and then immediately soften the sound, so that it almost disappears...”

“Thursday, the word went out that German cellist Alban Gerhardt, in the United States for a three-day visit, had agreed to come to Morristown’s Community Theatre to fill the concerto spot on the program with a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme. The results couldn’t have been happier. The 32-year-old Gerhardt is one of the hottest young cellists on the scene today, and hearing him for just a moment or two tells why. He plays with an irresistible blend of pleasure and passion, and the Rococo Variations provide plentiful occasions for both. Tchaikovsky wrote this quintessential showpiece in 1876 for a friend and colleague at the Moscow Conservatory, the cello virtuoso Wilheim Fitzenhagen. The variations are based on an elegant, 18th-century-style theme that Tchaikovsky wrote in tribute to Mozart, a composer he admired to the point of idolatry. The piece explores the cello’s technical possibilities from A to Z with rapid scales, trills, double stops, glissandos, harmonies, pizzicato – you name it.Gerhardt gamboled through it all, eyes closed, a little smile playing on his lips. And the orchestra, under the baton of music director Yehuda Gilad, provided just the right balance of support and forward momentum to keep the piece bubbling along from start to finish.”

“But the highlight of the evening was without question cellist Alban Gerhardt, who delivered a finely drawn version of Haydn’s C major Cello Concert that was as intricate yet flahsy as a Faberge egg. Gerhardt and the orchestra were to have played the D Major concerto, but the tour director packed the wrong music, and so Gerhardt was forced to brush up in an afternoon on the more straightforward of the two Haydn concertos. It must not have been far from his fingertips, though, since he played it from memory, and with a commitment to lyrical integrity and chiseled inner lines that Haydn doesn’t usually receive in performance. Gerhardt’s tone – soft, supple, translucent – brought out a glowing beauty to the work...”

“Cellist Alban Gerhardt joined Frantz and the orchestra for Shostakovich’s Concerto No.1. This was an intense reading by a soloist respected not only for his generous musicianship but also for generosity of spirit. The concerto’s lyricism trimphed, thanks to the cellists’s unusually songful playing in the long, languid slow movement. But it was in the complex cadenza before the finale that Gerhardt displayed an extraordinary range of nuance. Wether it was the opening whispered line or the snarling double stops near the end, he played brilliantly.”

“...German cellist Alban Gerhardt didn’t depict dementia, but instead offered candid, questing phrasing that never relented, even when Strauss’ melodic writing broke with standard heroic idiom. In essence, Gerhardt was character-acting the part of the quixottic Don without any disrespect for the distrubed gentleman. A hearty, guileless grace permeated Gerhardt’s playing, even when the surrounding orchestra formed a slyly denigrating context. The cello sound was reminiscent of Janos Starker’s, with impeccable vibrato, but with more stentorian clang of a great orator...”