Born in
Abbazia, Gerle was a violin student of . He studied at the
Franz Liszt Academy of Music and at the Hungarian National Conservatory. As a Jew he came during the Second World War to a labour camp, from which he fled in 1945. Via Paris he came to Luxembourg, where he worked for a short time as a radio soloist. In 1950 he came to the US as a scholarship holder of the
University of Illinois. In the 1960s he appeared as a violin soloist in the US and Europe and recorded works by
Ludwig van Beethoven,
Samuel Barber and others. In 1965, he was a soloist with the
Naumburg Orchestral Concerts, in the Naumburg Bandshell, Central Park, in the summer series. For his performance of all Beethoven sonatas for violin and piano with his wife, the pianist
Marilyn Neeley, he received an
Emmy Award for television in 1970. In the same year he married Neeley. Gerle taught violin at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore and at the
Mannes School of Music in New York. From 1972 he taught at the
University of Maryland, Baltimore County and at the
Catholic University of America. He also conducted the Friday Morning Music Club and the Washington Sinfonia. Gerle published the violin textbooks
The Art of Bowing Practice (1991) and
The Art of Practicing the Violin (1983) as well as memoirs entitled
Playing It by Heart: Wonderful Things Can Happen Any Day (2005). Gere died in
Hyattsville, Maryland, at age 81. == Further reading ==