I have never believed that music is built through moments alone, but through continuity: through trust earned over time, through long relationships, and through the slow accumulation of shared experience. The hardest task in music is not to build something from nothing, but to take something already exceptional and help it grow further without losing its identity. For more than thirty years I have built my life around orchestras and around the endlessly fascinating relationship between structure, risk and sound. Music demands discipline, responsibility and precision, but also the courage to approach danger rather than avoid it. Everything I value as a conductor comes from that tension: between control and freedom, architecture and fantasy, preparation and spontaneity.

Daniel Harding discovered orchestral music in youth orchestras from the age of 11, before going on to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic at 21. Over more than 30 years he has held positions in London, Stockholm, Paris, Rome and Los Angeles. He has conducted Opening Night at La Scala, the Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert, and opera and concerts with the leading orchestras and opera houses of Europe, Asia and the United States.

He is a Grammy winner and an airline pilot.