[2] His teachers in musical theory included Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern.
[1] Herbert von Karajan invited him to take on the permanent position as conductor of the Vienna State Opera.
His many conducting students included Claudio Abbado, Mariss Jansons, Alexis Hauser, Alexander Alexeev, Zubin Mehta,[1] Leonid Nikolaev, Paul Angerer, Ádám and Iván Fischer, Avi Ostrowsky Jesús López-Cobos, Gustav Meier, Ewa Michnik,[3] Miltiades Caridis, Aleksandr Alekseyev, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Brian Jackson, Alfred Prinz, Bryan Fairfax, James Allen Gähres, Albert Rosen and Bruno Weil,Wolfgang Harrer.
Otmar Suitner was Hans Swarowsky's successor at the Vienna Music Academy.
Swarowsky's lectures and essays were collected into the publication Wahrung der Gestalt (Keeping Shape), which today serves as an encyclopaedia for performance and conducting.