Daniel Harding, who was born in Oxford in 1975, began his career as an assistant to Simon Rattle and made his debut in 1994 leading the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In the 1995-96 season he served as assistant to Claudio Abbado with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducting that orchestra for the first time in 1996. His first music directorships were with the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra (1997–2000) and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie (1997–2003), after which he assumed leadership of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. In the summer of 2006 Harding took on the position of First Guest Conductor with the London Symphony Orchestra, while in January 2007 he began his tenure as head of the Swedish RSO. Harding appears with many renowned orchestras in both the Old and New Worlds, including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As an opera conductor, Harding has led several productions at the Aix-en-Provence Festival since 1998. In the 2002-03 season he made his debut at London’s Royal Opera House with Britten’s The Turn of the Screw as well as his debut with the Bavarian Staatsoper (Die Entführung aus dem Serail). For the opening of the 2005-06 season Harding made his debut at La Scala in Milan with Idomeneo, followed in 2007 by a new Salome and in 2008 by Bluebeard’s Castle. He has conducted Don Giovanni and Le nozze di Figaro at the Salzburg Festival, and in May 2010 he appeared at the Vienna Festival to lead a new production of Wozzeck. Harding’s recordings have won the Choc de l’Année, the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros, and the Gramophone Award. Since 2002 he has been a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
LUCERNE FESTIVAL debut on 16 August 2003 with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in works by Haydn, Kelterborn, and Schumann.
August 2011