Daniel Harding

“After winning thunderous acclaim for the first night of La Scala’s season, the 30-year-old Daniel Harding is suddenly one of the hottest properties in classical music.”

The Times, London, February 2006


Born in Oxford in 1975, Daniel Harding begins his career while still a student at Cambridge University, assisting Sir Simon Rattle at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In 1994 he makes his professional debut with the CBSO (winning the Royal Philharmonic Society’s “Best Debut” award) and goes on to assist Claudio Abbado at the Berliner Philharmoniker.

1996
Harding makes his Berliner Philharmoniker debut at the 1996 Berlin Festival and later this year becomes the youngest conductor ever to appear at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall

1997
Appointed Principal Conductor of the Trondheim Symphony in Norway (until 2000), Principal Guest Conductor of Sweden’s Norrköping Symphony (until 2003) and Music Director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen (until 2003)

1998
Conducts Mozart’s Don Giovanni at his Aix-en-Provence Festival debut

2001
Returns to the Aix Festival for Britten’s The Turn of the Screw

2002
Makes his Bavarian State Opera debut in Mozart’s Entführung; conducts Turn of the Screw at his Covent Garden debut and at the Edinburgh Festival; returns to the Aix Festival for Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. Concerts this year include appear­ances with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie at London’s Barbican and the Lon­don Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival; wins awards for his recording of The Turn of the Screw with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (Choc de l’Année, Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros, Gramophone); Harding is awarded the title Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government

2003
Becomes the first Music Director of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra; appears with the Dresden Staatskapelle at the Salzburg Festival; conducts Haydn’s Seven Last Words at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlight­enment; returns to the Barbican with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie and con­ducts his farewell concert with the Bremen Orchestra at the BBC; in the USA, he makes his debuts with the orchestras of Philadelphia and Minnesota

2004
Harding conducts Mahler’s Tenth in his debuts with the Wiener Philharmoniker, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and also performs the Mahler with the London Symphony Orchestra; conducts the LSO’s centenary gala concert. Returns to the Aix Festival for Verdi’s La traviata

2005
Così fan tutte at the Aix Festival; further concerts with the LSO; debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; triumphant Scala debut conducting Mozart’s Idomeneo

2006
Returns to Covent Garden for Berg’s Wozzeck, Mozart’s Zauberflöte in Aix-en-Provence, Don Giovanni in Salzburg and to Vienna for Così fan tutte. Concerts with La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra in Italy, with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the Bremen and Zermatt Music Festivals, on tour to Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, and in numerous European venues; conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Chicago. In the 2006/07 season Harding takes up posts of Music Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the LSO. In autumn 2006 Daniel Harding becomes an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist. His first recording is an aria recital by René Pape in which Harding conducts the Dresden Staatskapelle (scheduled for release in spring 2007)

2007
Concerts in the first half of the year are scheduled with the Dresden Staatskapelle, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra and London Symphony Orchestra (including a tour of the Far East with pianist Lang Lang); Harding will return to La Scala to conduct Strauss’s Salome