Born: May 27, 1918 - Stuttgart, Germany

The German choral conductor Gerhard Wilhelm’s musical talents, including absolute hearing, were recognized by his parents, and so they assign him to musical training As a boy he was a chorister with Stuttgarter Hymnus-Chorknaben. He also studied music in Stuttgart and in Berlin as a scholarship holder in the piano class of Edwin Fischer. Although his pianistic career had been open commodity, he participated in the the orchestra class of Carl Leonhardt in Stuttgart and earned himself the first kapelmeister chair at the Württemberg National Theatre.

Gerhard Wilhelm is one of those humans, who do not let themselves be separated for biographic data from their life's work. For more than a quarter of a century his artistic career with the ascent and the bloom of the covers itself. He may not have suspected during the re-establishment of this choir after the end of war yet the fact that the Stuttgarter Hymnus-Chorknaben became the mission of his life to turn out and would make every other musical connection unmoglich. But he recognized soon that only his renouncement of a Personlichkeitsspaltung in the occupation and private-people could lead the choir too that artistic ripe one, with which it today in the consciousness of the public presents itself.

Source: Liner notes to the CD ‘J.S. Bach: Passion’ conducted by Gerhard Wilhelm (Bayer Dacapo 1996)
Contributed by Aryeh Oron (May 2003)

Gerhard Wilhelm: Short Biography | Stuttgarter Hymnus-Chorknaben | Recordings | BWV 244 - Münchinger

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