Hans Swarowsky

Who was Hans Swarowsky?

Hans Swarowsky was an Austrian conductor of Hungarian birth and Jewish descent.

Swarowsky was born in Budapest, Hungary. He studied the art of conducting under Felix Weingartner and Richard Strauss. His teachers in musical theory included Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern.

Herbert von Karajan invited him to take on the permanent position as conductor of the Vienna State Opera.

He became a professor of conducting at the Vienna Music Academy. His many conducting students included Leonid Nikolaev, Paul Angerer, Claudio Abbado, Iván Fischer, Jesús López-Cobos, Zubin Mehta, Gustav Meier, Miltiades Caridis, Alexander Alexeev, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Brian Jackson, Alfred Prinz, Bryan Fairfax and Albert Rosen. Swarowsky's lectures and essays were collected into the publication Wahrung der Gestalt, which today serves as an encyclopaedia for performance and conducting.

He died in Salzburg, Austria, a few days before his 76th birthday.