[2] Gerhardt took up both the piano and cello at age eight, and studied with Marion Vetter and Götz Teutsch of the Berlin Philharmonic, and eventually began working under Markus Nyikos.

In 1993, he won the International Leonard Rose Cello Competition and in 1994, the Young Concert Artists Audition in New York.

[9] He subsequently recorded the concerto with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and Myung-Whun Chung for Deutsche Grammophon.

[10] He has also collaborated with other composers such as Thomas Larcher,[11] Brett Dean,[12] Jörg Widmann, Osvaldo Golijov,[13] Mathias Hinke and Matthias Pintscher.

[27] In 2012, he also began collaboration with Deutsche Bahn, involving live performances on the main commuter routes in Germany.