Daniel Harding is Music and Artistic Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He is also Artistic Director of the Anima Mundi Festival in Pisa and Conductor Laureate of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with whom he has worked for more than 20 years. He is one of few conductors regularly invited to conduct the world’s foremost orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concergebouw Orchestra and Wiener Philharmoniker, and additionally a qualified airline pilot.
A renowned opera conductor, he has led acclaimed productions at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Theater an der Wien, London’s Royal Opera House and at the Salzburg and Aix-en-Provence Festivals. He has made a great number of recordings, including Grammy Award-winning Billy Budd with the London Symphony Orchestra and Beethoven’s Piano Concertos No. 3 and 4 with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Maria João Pires.
Harding’s contract as music director extends through the 2022–2023 season. In 2019, he also accepted a new role as the orchestra’s first artistic director with an overall responsibility for the orchestra’s artistic vision. This expanded role also includes the opportunity to create brand new types of concert programmes and ways to present classical music in creative ways.
"We are very proud that Harding leads our orchestra. His passion, energy and creativity challenges us and our audience daily", says Cilla Benkö, director general of the Swedish Radio.
"It is increasingly rare for the relationship between a conductor and an orchestra not only lasts for more than a decade, but keeps growing”, Daniel Harding says about working with the orchestra. “It is also rare for an orchestra of the highest musical standard also very obviously want to keep on growing."
Harding started out playing the trumpet, but in his teens, the interest in conducting took over. 17 years old, he led a performance of Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with a student ensemble. This led to a job assisting Simon Rattle with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for a year. The time with Rattle and the orchestra ended with Harding’s professional debut, conducting the orchestra himself.
