Franz Welser-Möst studied the violin and piano as a child and also sang in a choir. When he was fourteen he entered the Linz Music School, and two years later began to conduct its orchestra and chorus, doing so in public for the first time in 1977. He survived a serious motor accident in 1978, when his car skidded on ice, but was left with permanent nerve damage in his left hand which destroyed any chance of a future career as an instrumentalist. In order to retain his relationship with music he concentrated wholly on conducting, and became a conducting pupil of Balduin Sulzer. He was a finalist in the 1979 Herbert von Karajan Conducting Competition in Berlin, and went on to study at the Music High School in Munich between 1980 and 1984, but d...