Rudolf Kehrer

The much-recorded German pianist Rudolf Kehrer was born at Tiflis in Georgia on 10 July 1923 into a family of piano manufacturers who had emigrated from Swabia in Germany, and his talent as a pianist was recognised early.

At the outbreak of World War II he was deported to Kazakhstan, and he had to wait until 1954, after Stalin's death, before being able to continue his studies at Tashkent Conservatoire in Uzbekistan.

After winning the 1961 All-Union Contest in Moscow, he played and recorded during the period 1961 to 2001 - more than two thousand concerts in over 330 cities, including Alsfeld, Berlin, Busch, Cologne, Eggenberg, Eisenach, Jena, Kyiv, Meppen, Montabaur, Moscow, Munich, Overath, Prague, Remagen, Szeged, Tokyo and Weimar. There's an extensive collection of these recordings at the Rudolf Kehrer Archive in Overath.

Kehrer, whose most recent home was in Zürich, died on 29 October 2013, aged ninety.