LSO Principal Guest Conductor Daniel Harding allows us to follow him for a day as he rehearses and performs with the LSO. Produced, edited and directed by Tommy Pearson.
Saw him conduct the Berlin Phil today, stepping in at short notice for a challenging program including a work by Ligeti he had never conducted. Nothing but praise for this conductor.
Our Principal Guest Conductor Daniel Harding is with us for the next week, conducting two concerts in London and two in Madrid. We make this mini-documentary about life with Daniel behind the scenes a couple of years back - still enjoyable!
Nice to welcome our Principal Guest Conductor Daniel Harding back this week, for a concert on Thursday. Here's a short documentary we made about him conducting the LSO a couple of years back.
I absolutely totally love the complete honesty of this conductor in revealing his frailties and humanness and love his conducting style - solid, beautifully lyrical conductor.
Wow, a real person. He's a charmer who speaks with intelligence and confidence. And, like Yannick Nézet-Séguin, he's a man of smaller stature. I admire Daniel for being a napper. If he keeps that up he will have a young brain for a very long time. // Sidenote: the famous writer Philip Roth once said about napping that it was the most bliss-inducing activity that is so easy to do. Roth said that coming out of a nap, one has a transition of about 15 seconds in which he does not know who he is, where he is, etc. I think that is as close to pure awareness as one can get.
You can see how he transforms just before he starts to conduct. Like he's moving from daily life into the musical world of the composer in the blink of an eye. Amazing to see. His Mahler 1 with the RCO was phenomenal. Please keep coming to Amsterdam, Maestro Harding.
Many conductors "jump around" because they are into the beauty of the music that is being created and that is the way they feel they should conduct the music.
I just watched a 2021 concert with the Vienna Philharmonic on PBS conducted by Harding, and his renditions of symphonic pieces are all lethargic, lifeless and uninspired. He made Bernstein's West Side Story Symphonic Dances sound dead, flat and tired. The final Strauss waltz was so slow and undanceable, I bet the Viennese were upset. NOT A FAN AT ALL OF HIS SNAIL PACE CONDUCTING. He's like the new Carlo Maria Giulini...Mr. slow poke.
