Carlo Maria Giulini initially studied the viola with Remy Principe and composition with Alessandro Bustini at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, before turning to conducting with Bernardino Molinari. As a student he played in a string quartet, and during the late 1930s was a member of the viola section of the Augusteo Orchestra of Rome, playing under conductors such as Furtwängler, Klemperer, Richard Strauss and Bruno Walter. During World War II he was a member of the Italian army, before going into hiding because of his anti-Fascist beliefs; however with the collapse of Germany in Europe, in 1944 he was chosen to conduct the first concert to celebrate the liberation of Rome, in a programme at the Augusteo featuring Brahms’s Symphony No. 4.