Christian Gerhaher

During his studies with Paul Kuën and Raimund Grumbach, Christian Gerhaher also attended the opera school of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, studying Lieder singing there with his regular piano partner Gerold Huber. In addition to also studying medicine, he completed his training through masterclasses with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Inge Borkh.

For more than 30 years the baritone and Gerold Huber have together set a golden standard of song interpretation, for which the duo have been awarded with many prestigious prizes, most recently the Hugo Wolf Medal of the International Hugo Wolf Academy. Recitals have taken the pair to the prestigious concert halls of New York, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Cologne and Berlin Philharmonies, the Vienna Konzerthaus and the Vienna Musikverein. Christian Gerhaher is also a regular guest at the festivals of Edinburgh, Lucerne, Salzburg, the Rheingau Musik Festival and the BBC Proms.

Christian Gerhaher has worked worldwide with conductors such as Simon Rattle, Herbert Blomstedt, Daniel Barenboim, Andris Nelsons, Kent Nagano, Mariss Jansons, Kirill Petrenko, Daniel Harding, Bernard Haitink, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Christian Thielemann, and appears in concert with orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic. He has been artist in residence with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, with the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, and at London’s Wigmore Hall.

As a much sought-after singer and actor on the operatic stage, Christian Gerhaher has won prizes such as the Laurence Olivier Award and the German theatre prize Der Faust. His repertoire includes roles such as Don Giovanni, Orfeo, Wolfram, Eisenstein, Pelléas, Posa and Olivier (Capriccio). His 2015 debut as Wozzeck was a major milestone in his operatic career; other highlights include Henze’s Der Prinz von Homburg, Amfortas (Parsifal) and Nikolaus Lenau in the world premiere of Heinz Holliger’s Lunea.

In 2020/21 he made his role debut as Aribert Reimann’s King Lear under Jukka-Pekka Saraste at the Bavarian State Opera and as Simon Boccanegra at the Zurich Opera House under Fabio Luisi, and added another Verdi role to his repertoire with Giorgio Germont (La traviata) in London. In January 2022 he sang the Count in Le nozze di Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera, and in March he appeared as Wozzeck in a new production by Simon Stone at the Vienna State Opera.

Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber’s rich discography was augmented in autumn 2021 with a project close to their hearts: an eleven-part CD box set entitled Robert Schumann: Alle Lieder, which contains 299 songs; almost the entire song output of the composer. In spring 2022 Christian Gerhaher released a recording of Othmar Schoeck’s Elegie with the Basel Chamber Orchestra and Heinz Holliger, and also the Lyrisches Tagebuch (a compilation of Lieder).

Christian Gerhaher is a Bavarian Kammersänger, Honorary Professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, and has been awarded the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art and the Bavarian State Prize for Music. He was awarded the 2016 Heidelberger Frühling Music Award for his extraordinary commitment to the performance of classical music.