He promoted contemporary music, beginning with Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, followed by works by Richard Strauss, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Edgard Varèse, later Iannis Xenakis, Luigi Nono and Leon Schidlowsky.

[3] His technique when in this mode sometimes caused problems for players; an unidentified BBC Symphony Orchestra bassoonist told the singer Ian Wallace that interpreting Scherchen's minuscule hand movements was like trying to milk a flying gnat.

[4] According to Fritz Spiegl,[5] Scherchen worked largely through verbal instructions to his players and his scores were peppered with reminders of what he needed to say at each critical point in the music.

The film of his rehearsal of his edition of Bach's The Art of Fugue with the CBC Toronto Chamber Orchestra shows him using a baton throughout.

The last of his five wives was the Zurich-based Romanian mathematics teacher Pia Andronescu,[6][7] with whom he had five children: Myriam, David, Esther, Nathan and Alexandra.

Wulff's relationship with Britten is also the subject of Serenade for Tenor, Saxophone and Orchestra, a song cycle by Lyle Chan based on the romantic letters exchanged by the pair.

When Radó was threatened in Switzerland by German security agents and faced eviction, Hermann Scherchen hid him in his apartment in Geneva.