The Observer 30 July 2006 Daniel Harding : Conducting his life with brio This morning, the London Symphony Orchestra's new star will direct a celebration of Mozart's birth in Vienna. It's quite an achievement - but then this 30-year-old Briton is one of the most dynamic men in music today Daniel Harding was as relaxed as a man can be last week as he rehearsed Don Giovanni with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival while keeping an eye on the Test match at Old Trafford. "Mahmood's playing? So we've had a Sikh [Monty Panesar] playing against India and now we've got a Muslim playing against Pakistan. We live in interesting times. For the fresh-faced Harding, who has crammed an awful lot into his 30 years, times could hardly be more interesting. Music director of the Berlin-based Mahler Chamber Orchestra, he becomes principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra in October and takes up the principal conductor's post at the Swedish Radio SO in January. In what time that is left to him, he will continue to go to Dresden, where he has enjoyed the happiest music-making of his young life with the Staatskapelle; to La Scala in Milan, where he opened the season with Idomeneo to loud hurrahs last December, and to Vienna, the greatest of all musical cities, where the famous orchestra cannot stop showering him with gifts. Two years ago, it invited him to conduct Gustav Mahler's 10th symphony, a work it had pointedly refused to perform before (the last three movements were "completed" from sketches 50 years after the composer's death by Deryck Cooke, the English musicologist), and next year they will record it together. Besides the current Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro, which forms part of next summer's Salzburg Festival, Harding will also accompany the orchestra in a special concert at the Vienna State Opera to mark the Austrian national day. But that event will not surpass the honour conferred on him this morning when Harding conducts a gala concert in the Grosses Festspielhaus, with a roster of top-class singers, including Rene Pape, Anna Netrebko and Thomas Hampson. The concert, to mark the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth, will be televised live in Austria, and carried in many other countries, though not the United Kingdom, where the BBC's policy of cultural degradation means that any celebration of the world's most popular composer is dangerously "elitist". Other than Simon Rattle, who won the John Player conducting competition in 1974, while he was a 19-year-old student at the Royal Academy of Music, and was appointed chief conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra six years later, no Englishman has ever introduced himself to orchestral music in so bold a manner. The youngest man to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic, and the youngest to appear at the Proms, Harding has never lacked admirers - nor detractors, notably in the British press. But he is not going to go away. The presence of Hampson, the American baritone, on the platform (and as the Don in Martin Kusej's revival of Giovanni) may remind Harding of the December night in Paris 11 years ago that changed his life. Standing in for Rattle, who had withdrawn for family reasons, he led the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Hampson through Mahler's song-cycle symphony, Das Lied von der Erde, at the Chatelet Theatre after a single rehearsal. "It was good of Simon to run it in for me," he said before (not after) the performance. There's confidence for you. Stephane Lissner, who ran the Chatelet, was sufficiently impressed to engage Harding for a new production of Don Giovanni when he took over shortly afterwards as director of the Aix Festival. Barely out of short pants in musical terms (he still looks alarmingly young), Harding was paired with the Paris-based English director, Peter Brook, in a staging that travelled to Milan, Lyons, Brussels and Tokyo with a cast of fine young singers, and was eventually recorded. "I've conducted the piece more than 60 times," Harding said this week, "and I must say, I was absolutely terrified about coming back to it. Every time I opened the score, I felt trapped by memories of what we had done before. But I'm happy to say that I am trapped no longer. It's a different orchestra, the singers are different and everything is going well." Born in Oxford on 31 August 1975, to John, a lecturer in engineering science at Oxford University, and Caroline, Harding attended Chetham's, the Manchester music school, where, among other things, he formed a serious attachment to Manchester United. A trumpeter by discipline, and good enough to play in the National Youth Orchestra, his conducting life began at 17 when he assembled a group of friends to perform Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and - no faint heart he - sent a tape to Rattle, who, curious to know who this cheeky young shaver was, summoned the boy to Birmingham. "He told me that ours was a more accurate performance than the one he had conducted in Berlin the week before," Harding recalled, with a laugh, "but he added, 'You clearly don't understand a thing.'" Nevertheless, taken by his talent and intelligence, Rattle asked Harding to spend a year as his assistant, marking scores and attending rehearsals. By the end of that year, in April 1994, he introduced him towards the end of a CBSO concert in Symphony Hall and permitted him to conduct the suite from Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin If Rattle provided that important first opportunity, Harding owes as much to Claudio Abbado who, in 1995, created an assistant's post for him at the Berlin Philharmonic, where the Italian was musical director. He had just completed his first year at Cambridge University but the prospect of observing Abbado at close quarters was irresistible and it is fair to say his podium manner resembles Abbado more closely than Rattle. Berlin, where he ended up spending five years, was memorable for other reasons, too. It was there he met Beatrice, his viola-playing, French-German wife and, after five years in Paris, last year they set up home in London, with their children, George and Adele. It has not all been plain sailing. He had a bad time at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and walked out of a production of Cosi fan tutte at the Paris Opera last autumn, after one rehearsal, appalled by the orchestra's arrogance. "Now you know why the French gave me the Legion d'Honneur," Abbado told him later. "I never conducted a French orchestra!" Earlier this month, Harding received the most wounding reviews of his life for The Magic Flute at Aix, where he has become the house conductor. Hugh Canning, knowledgeable and ever readable, wrote of the "by now familiar mannerisms - extremes of slow and fast tempi, laboured Harnoncourtesque rallentandi and explosive emphases". No wonder people booed, he said. "There was one guy who booed on the first night," allowed Harding, "but, hang on, I've been a United fan at Anfield and I know what abuse is like! A number of people came up to us afterwards, as the run went on, and said sorry for the response you got. It's all bollocks, really. People think that because I'm young, I set out to be different but I simply try to do what is put in front of me. "As for arbitrary tempi, if you look at any Mozart opera, you can find 40 tempo markings. He was very specific and you have little room for manoeuvre if you intend to observe them all. Some are slower than people expect, others are faster. Nobody likes to be publicly flagellated for doing their job but, as fellow conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt has said, you can listen to what people have to say, but you can't change the order of days in a week, and you can't let anybody come between you and the score. And I thought the Mahler Chamber Orchestra played The Magic Flute gloriously." English audiences, who have so far heard little of him, will have the chance to form their own opinions when he begins to work regularly with the LSO, which is not always recognised in this country as one of the world's great orchestras. "They have acquired a desire to be patient," said Harding, who is an unabashed fan. "They want to look into things and to give the conductor a sense of space, which may not always have been the case in the past. I feel whenever I work with them that I have time to do more than just organise things. The musicians are curious and ambitious, and technically they are magnificent." A global traveller since his teens, he is not daunted by the need to travel. The orchestras he has added to his inventory in the past year include the mighty bands of Amsterdam and Chicago and from this moment on, there seems to be a plum in every pudding: Eugene Onegin at Covent Garden, Salome and Falstaff at La Scala and a return to the Berlin Philharmonic. The chap who puts on his concert dress suit in Salzburg this morning to honour the immortal Wolfgang Amadeus - the garment signed by the Manchester United players who didn't know who he was - is a very special young man indeed. The Harding Lowdown Born: Daniel Harding, 31 August 1973, Oxford, son of John and Caroline. Married to Beatrice Muthelet, with two children, George Gordon (named after Lord Byron, a hero) and Adele. Best of times: First night of Mozart's Idomeneo at La Scala, December 2005. Fifteen-minute ovation at the opening night of the season, the first after Riccardo Muti's departure, which led to the headline: "Miracle in Milan". Worst of times: Hostile response to The Magic Flute, Aix, July 2006. Refusal to conduct Cosi fan tutte in Paris, October 2005 because the orchestra wouldn't listen to him. What he says: "I would much rather work with a 'small' orchestra who wanted to do something special than go to a "great" one for the sake of it. But I want to go to the great ones, and have a good time!" What others say: "My little genius" - Claudio Abbado. "Pretentious and unmusical" - critic Hugh Canning. Michael Henderson Le Figaro 13 July 2005 At the age of 29 Daniel Harding is already at the head of an acknowledged orchestra. At Aix-en-Provence, where in 1998 he triumphed conducting Don Giovanni, he is nearly like a king in his own court. "Never again will we encounter such an intense experience" he says, looking back. Claudio Abbado (who had kindly refused to let it be known which conductor would conduct which performance so as not to attract all the attention) and Peter Brook had built up an extremely successful production. Since then, whilst staying faithful to the Festival, Harding has taken off. He has just been named Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra from January 2007 onwards. Aix, where he conducted The Turn of the Screw in 2001, Eugene Onegin in 2002 and La Traviata last year, will see him again next year in a new production of The Magic Flute with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (founded in 1997 by Claudio Abbado and whose music director he has been since 2003). His career has been nearly fautless although of course music critics have not spared him. The Cosi he conducted this year was not throughout a critical success. Some have accused him of conducting certain composers (i.e. Brahms, Mahler) too soon – composers who require a certain maturity. But you need more than that to upset the young man whose fragile exterior masks a great ardour. Shortly before the beginning of the festival he explained to us that to be a conductor demands total self-confidence. No arrogance whatsoever in these sentences, but a strong determination. The most important is to have the confidence of the orchestras. The review of a journalist does not count that much. "It is the inverse which would be dangerous" explains Harding, who admits to really trusting only two people – his wife (viola player with the MCO ) and Simon Rattle, his guardian angel. The story of Daniel Harding resembles a fairy tale. Right from the beginning, from his childhood in Oxford (where he already dabbled in music) to music school in Manchester (where he followed a course in conducting) he always knew that he wanted but one thing: to become a conductor. Simon Rattle, then at the head of the Birmingham orchestra, gave him his first chance at the age of 16. "I came at the right time. Birmingham had room for young people. I was still very timid which did not make things easy for somebody who wanted to become a conductor." Rattle was 40 at the time and Harding was his first real pupil. "Rattle has a real gift for teaching, contrary to others. He is very hard, but always finds a way to lift you up again." Harding owes his first appearance to a tragic occurence. Due to the sudden death of his father Rattle was forced to cancel a concert at the Châtelet and suggested to Stéphane Lissner (at the time director of this house) that his assistant take over. The rest is history. "I was offered to come to Aix to conduct The Turn of the Screw. Just as I was about to take the plane to meet Luc Bondy I received a phone call telling me it would finally be Don Giovanni with Peter Brook. I was terrified!" The perspective of working with a young orchestra and of three months preparations overcame his qualms. To those surprised to see such a young conductor Harding replies that the case is not so rare. "Fifty or sixty years ago nobody thought anything about it. Furtwängler started to conduct at the age of 19. The problem is that nowadays all the lights are focused on you and young conductors are not left to develop slowly." Harding's only "regret" is that he was spoilt too much and too early in Aix. "I had three months of rehearsals with a director like Peter Brook for the first opera I ever conducted. I thought it was always like that!" he says smiling. He established the same sort of collaboration and complicity with Chéreau this year, being of the same opinion immediately. "I saw a performance of Cosi two or three years ago and I thought "What an idiotic opera this is. Who wants to laugh about things which are not really funny". It was only when Simon Rattle conducted a concert performance in Berlin that I realized the whole tragic dimension included in this work." Jean-Louis Validire