Claudio Abbado wrote this text for the first edition of 'Wahrung der Gestalt' in 1979:
I studied with him between 1956 and 1958 (together with Zubin Mehta, Borislav Pascan, Rainer Brock and others) and will never forget what he has done for all of us, not just as a teacher. He always found time for us students also outside of our studies and helped us wherever he could. His extraordinary, universal
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Wolfgang Gabriel studied piano with Hans Sittner and Grete Hinterhofer, music theory with Josef Marx and Alfred Uhl, and conducting with Hans Swarowsky:
In this interview from summer 2018, Zubin Mehta remembers his teacher Hans Swarowsky. Zubin Mehta, who got his diploma at the Vienna Music Academy in 1958, was among Swarowsky's first students (together with Claudio Abbado) to contribute to the international reputation of the Swarowsky class in Vienna.
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Urbanner studied from 1955 to 1961 at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, in the composition classes of Karl Schiske and Hans Jelinek, as well as studying piano with Grete Hinterhofer and conducting with Hans Swarowsky. This interview was recorded early 2018 in Vienna.
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As part of an exchange programme between the Vienna Music Academy and the Moscow Conservatory, I was able to study in Vienna during the academic year 1966/67, attending the conducting classes of Hans Swarowsky and Karl Österreicher. I am particularly grateful to Hans Swarowsky for his practical suggestions on how to organize rehearsals, his profound knowledge, especially of Viennese classical music, and his methodology of clear analysis. He was mostly interested in correlations and structure, which we had to fathom with a clear head. Thus, his teaching was characterized by objectivity and honesty towards the score. He left everything concerning expression and feeling to his students, which in the end allowed them to retain their individuality. We did not leave his class as one model, but with all our differences.