Charles Allan Gerhardt, 72, Record Producer and Conductor
   By ALLAN KOZINN

   Charles Allan Gerhardt, a record producer who recorded many of the
   great classical music performers of the 1950's and 1960's and who
   also conducted a series of classic film-score albums, died on Feb.
   22 at Mercy Hospital in Redding, Calif.  He was 72 and lived in
   Redding.

   Robert E.  Benson, a music critic and friend of Gerhardt, said the
   cause was complications from surgery for brain cancer.

   Gerhardt was born in Detroit in 1927 and grew up in Little Rock,
   Ark., where he began studying the piano at age 5 and composition at
   9.  After service in the Navy as a chaplain's assistant during World
   War II, he studied music and science at several colleges, including
   the University of Illinois and the University of Southern California.

   Gerhardt, who was fascinated with recordings, joined the technical
   staff of RCA Victor in 1950, first to prepare long-playing reissues
   of recordings by Enrico Caruso and Artur Schnabel and then to assist
   at sessions for Vladimir Horowitz, Wanda Landowska, Kirsten Flagstad
   and William Kapell.  He also worked closely with Arturo Toscanini,
   who encouraged him to study conducting.  By the early 1960's, he was
   overseeing RCA's productions in London.

   As a producer, Gerhardt's first major project was "A Festival of
   Light Classical Music," sold through the Reader's Digest in 1960.

   He also produced a Beethoven cycle conducted by Ren Leibowitz, in
   1961, that is prized by collectors and has recently been reissued by
   Chesky Records.

   In 1964, Gerhardt formed an orchestra of London musicians for use
   at his recording sessions.  It was incorporated as the National
   Philharmonic Orchestra in 1970, and besides producing its recordings
   with a variety of conductors and soloists, Gerhardt conducted it
   himself on recordings of standard repertory works and contemporary
   pieces.

   His best-known series was an extensive collection of film scores that
   began in 1972 with "The Sea Hawk," the first major overview of Erich
   Korngold's film music, and included volumes devoted to the works of
   Max Steiner, Miklos Rozsa, Franz Waxman, Alfred Newman, Dmitri Tiomkin,
   Bernard Hermann and John Williams.  The success of his Korngold disk
   also led to a reinvestigation of Korngold's serious music, and in
   1975 he produced the first recording of the composer's opera, "Die
   Tote Stadt."

   Gerhardt retired from RCA in 1986 and worked as a freelance producer
   until 1997.  No immediate family members survive.

   Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company

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