Simultaneously, he studied piano at the Musikhochschule Frankfurt with August Leopolder, while all other subjects had been previously covered by the Musisches Gymnasium.

[1] Although he did not complete his studies formally, he became personal assistant to Georg Solti at the Oper Frankfurt in 1953,[1][3] and also worked with Hans Rosbaud and Bruno Walter.

[5] He continued the tradition of music in Darmstadt, based on the work of Karl Böhm and Gustav Rudolf Sellner, and of the Darmstädter Ferienkurse.

[2] During his tenure, he conducted operas such as Henze's Der Prinz von Homburg, Schoeck's Penthesilea, Rimsky-Korsakov's Der goldene Hahn, Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Britten's Tod in Venedig, and the operas by Wolfgang Fortner.

In concerts, he performed the complete works by Gustav Mahler when the composer was not yet popular, and covered 400 years of music history from Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine and Charpentier's Magnificat to Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms and Hans Ulrich Engelmann's Stele für Georg Büchner.