Mehta has said that on many occasions when he conducts in the U.S., someone approaches him to say, "You don't know how much I loved your father!" Mehta has described his childhood as surrounded by music at home all the time, and has said he probably learned to speak Gujarati and sing around the same time. He says his father had a strong influence on him, and he listened to his quartet daily after his father returned from the USA after the Second World War. Mehta was first taught to play violin and piano by his father. When he reached his early teens, his father allowed him to lead sectional rehearsals of the Bombay Symphony, and at sixteen, he was conducting the full orchestra during rehearsals. Mehta graduated from St. Mary's School, Mumbai and went on to study medicine at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, at the urging of his mother, who wanted him to take up a more "respectable" profession than music. At age eighteen, he dropped out after two years to move to Vienna, one of Europe's music centers, in order to study music under Hans Swarowsky at the state music academy. He lived on $75 per month, and was a contemporary of conductor Claudio Abbado and conductor-pianist Daniel Barenboim. He remained at the academy for three years, during which time he also studied the double bass, which he played in the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. Swarowsky recognized Mehta's abilities early on, describing him as a "demoniac conductor" who "had it all". While still a student, after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he organized a student orchestra in seven days and conducted it in a concert at a refugee camp outside Vienna. Mehta graduated in 1957 when he was 21 with a diploma in conducting. In 1958 he entered the Liverpool International Conductor's Competition with 100 contestants and took first prize. The prize included a year's contract as associate conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which he conducted in 14 concerts, all of which received rave reviews. He then was a 2nd-place prizewinner at the summer academy at the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts. At that competition he attracted the notice of Charles Munch, then the conductor of the Boston Symphony, who later helped his career. In 1958, he boldly programmed an all-Schoenberg concert, which did so well that he accepted further bookings. That same year he also married a