Karl Österreicher

Karl Österreicher came to the podium from the clarinet, having played in the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera, with the Vienna Philharmonic and in the Vienna Symphony before teaching became his life's work. Born at Rohrbach an der Gölsen in 1923, he trained at the Vienna academy — clarinet with Leopold Wlach, theory with Alfred Uhl — and studied conducting with Hans Swarowsky and Clemens Krauss. He joined the academy's staff in 1956 and taught conducting there until 1992, to students who arrived from Russia, Japan, China, Ethiopia and the United States; Mariss Jansons and Dmitri Kitaenko were among them. He died in 1995, and the Vienna music university has awarded a conducting prize in his name annually since 2024.