Rudolf Kehrer

Rudolf Richardovich Kehrer was an outstanding Soviet, Russian, and German pianist and music teacher. He was born on July 10, 1923, in Tbilisi, in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, USSR, into a family of hereditary musicians. His father and grandfather were musical craftsmen. His father owned a workshop in the city center, and after it was confiscated by the Soviet authorities, he worked as a piano tuner at the Tbilisi Conservatory, where he associated with many musicians and could himself play the piano and a little violin.

Kehrer began studying piano at the age of six with E. K. Krause. By the age of twelve he already knew the core piano repertoire and attended concerts by many musicians, including Maria Yudina and Egon Petri. From 1935 he studied in the conservatory's group for gifted children with A. I. Tulashvili, and from 1938 to 1941 he continued with her at the conservatory. On Tulashvili's recommendation he was preparing to transfer to the Moscow Conservatory to study with Heinrich Neuhaus, but the repression that struck his family prevented this.

In the autumn of 1941, the German Kehrer family was deported to Central Asia and lived under travel restrictions in the settlement of Slavyanka in Kazakhstan. After the war the family was able to move to Pakhta-Aral, a large state farm with a club where Rudolf played the accordion for children. In 1949 he enrolled in the correspondence department of physics and mathematics at the Chimkent Pedagogical Institute. He graduated with honors in 1952 and received a diploma qualifying him to teach mathematics and physics in a seven-year school. Until 1954 he taught mathematics in the upper grades of a secondary school. From 1952 he resumed his piano studies.

In 1954 he entered the third year of the Tashkent Conservatory in the class of Z. Sh. Tamarkina, and also studied with her husband V. I. Slonim. After graduating with honors in 1957, he remained there as a teacher. An important event in his artistic life was his acquaintance with the outstanding pianist Maria Grinberg, whose private pupils over the years had included Tamarkina and Slonim; with Grinberg he carefully worked through the entire repertoire for an upcoming competition in Moscow. For many years Kehrer continued to study and consult with Grinberg.

In 1961 he won first prize at the All-Union Competition of Performing Musicians in Moscow, where he had been admitted by special exception because he was already thirty-seven years old, and he became a soloist of the Moscow Philharmonic. He toured in the USSR, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Japan, and took part in festivals including Moscow Stars. In the same year he was invited to teach at the Moscow Conservatory. Among his students were international competition prizewinners and pianists from several countries, including Arnaldo Moreira-Lima of Brazil, Jorge Luis Prats of Cuba, B. Steinerova of Czechoslovakia, as well as I. Plotnikova and S. Tikhonov. He also appeared in the television film Appassionata in the role of I. A. Dobrovein.

In 1977 Kehrer was awarded the Robert Schumann Prize of the German Democratic Republic. In 1983 he received the title People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. He also made recordings for the Melodiya label.

In 1990 he received an invitation from Austria to serve on the jury of a competition and was then invited to work at the Vienna Conservatory, where he taught for eight years. In 1998, at the invitation of his Vienna students, he moved to Zurich. He gave his last concerts in the 2006-2007 season. In 2010 he moved to Berlin, where the family of his elder son lived. He died there on October 29, 2013, and his urn was buried in the columbarium of the Third Schoneberg Cemetery.

Connections

This figure has 1 connection in the Music Lineage catalog.