Herbert von Karajan’s father was a doctor at the Salzburg hospital and his mother was of Slav descent. He began to take piano lessons when he was four, and studied chamber music, composition, piano and theory at the Salzburg Mozarteum for ten years from 1916. His tutors included Bernhard Paumgartner, who conducted his first concerto appearance in 1919 and encouraged him to become a conductor. After graduating from the Mozarteum in 1926, Karajan entered the Vienna Academy, where he studied piano with Hofmann and conducting with Wunderer. At the beginning of 1929 he conducted the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra; as a result he was offered the chance to conduct a trial performance by the director of the Ulm Municipal Theatre, and subsequently was ...