In 1943, aged 21, he married the 37-year-old pianist Gerda Nette-Rothe.[4][5] She then became known as Gerda Nette-Taschner.
In the dying days of the Second World War, the sacked German munitions minister Albert Speer devised a plan to protect the players of the Berlin Philharmonic from the invading Soviet forces. They would play a concert under Robert Heger and then be whisked away to a safe location out of Berlin.[6] Gerhard Taschner played the BeethovenViolin Concerto. At the end of the concert, however, the players voted to remain in Berlin, in solidarity with their patrons, who were unable to escape. However, Taschner left in a car driven by Speer's chauffeur, taking with him his wife, two children, and the daughter of another musician.[citation needed] They took refuge in Thurnau.[4] From 1946 to 1950 he lived in Rüdesheim am Rhein.
Wolfgang Fortner dedicated his Violin Concerto to Gerhard Taschner.[2] He premiered it in 1947 and went on to become its greatest champion.[citation needed] Fortner also dedicated his Violin Sonata to Taschner.[4]
His personal nature was difficult and uncompromising, often leading to irreparable rifts with students, peers and others.[4] He had very strong and inflexible ideas which sometimes put him at odds with conductors and composers. In 1944 he suggested to Jean Sibelius that the final movement of his Violin Concerto in D minor be played more slowly than the composer had indicated; a suggestion not taken up by Sibelius.[8] During a rehearsal in the late 1940s, he and the conductor Herbert von Karajan were unable to agree on some matters of artistic interpretation, which led to Taschner storming out of the rehearsal and refusing to play the concert; the two never played together again.[3]
In 1950 Taschner was appointed a professor at the Musikhochschule in Berlin. He also concertised internationally; in South America he was dubbed "the Manolete of the violin".[9] In Europe, he was seen as the successor to Adolf Busch, Huberman and Fritz Kreisler.[1]
A back condition caused his withdrawal from the concert platform in the early 1960s when still aged only 40. He continued to teach and play chamber music,[2] and served on various competition juries such as the 1957 Henryk Wieniawski Competition in Poznan; the 1957 and 1959 Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition in Paris, the 1960 Paganini Competition in Genoa and the 1963 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels.[4]
Gerhard Taschner died in Berlin in 1976, aged 54. He is buried in the III. Municipal cemetery Stubenrauchstraße in Berlin-Friedenau.
Posthumous reputation
Taschner never had a major recording contract.[citation needed] However, he made numerous radio broadcasts and many of these recordings have been re-released, or released for the first time, leading to a latter-day following. Many of the radio recordings were confiscated by the invading Soviet forces at the end of the war, and came to light only after their return in 1991.[2]
Of his recording of the Ravel Violin Sonata, one critic says: Taschner projects the Ravel Sonata's jazz-tinged nuances to perfection,[11] but another says His Ravel sonata misses the jazzy comical element and is rather straightforward and serious.[3]
^Gerda Nette-Taschner was born 21 November 1906; a student and adopted daughter of Robert Teichmüller; she was still performing in 1999, aged 93. She died 15 October 2012
^This occurred on either 28 March or 12 April 1945; sources differ on the exact date.