Daniel Harding, a British-born conductor with a long career leading Europe’s top orchestras, has been named music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, succeeding Gustavo Dudamel as the maestro of one of the most influential orchestras in the United States.
With the appointment of Harding, the Philharmonic has returned to a more traditional model of a U.S. orchestra leader. Dudamel, from Venezuela, was 26 and conducting the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra when he was selected for the job in 2007. Spanish is his first language, a major reason his tenure resonated in a city whose population is nearly 50 percent Hispanic or Latino.
Harding, 50, was born in Oxford, England, and serves as the music director of the prestigious Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. He has worked over the decades with orchestras in Sweden, Paris, Berlin and London. He speaks French, German, Italian and English — but not Spanish. He is also a licensed airline pilot, whose 30,000-foot assignments for Air France have been almost as notable as his time at the podium.
Dudamel will take over as music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic in September. In the past 17 years, he has established himself as a cultural and civic power in Los Angeles: It is difficult to drive along a major street in Los Angeles these days without passing “Gracias Gustavo” banners marking his departure.
In an interview, Harding said the Los Angeles Philharmonic had “never been as big a deal” as it is today. He credited that to Dudamel who, he said, “makes a job at that institution more attractive than ever — and the challenge greater than ever.”
Harding will not, at least initially, have the same broad authority that Dudamel enjoyed. He will be the music director, while Dudamel filled the roles of both music director and artistic director. And this fall, Esa-Pekka Salonen, who held the top conducting post at the Philharmonic for 17 years before Dudamel took over, will return to the orchestra as its creative director.
Harding will start in the 2027-28 season, leading eight weeks of concerts; eventually, that will increase to 12. He will form one part of what the orchestra has described as a “reimagined leadership team” that also includes Salonen; Dudamel, as the newly appointed artistic cultural laureate; and Anna Handler, as conductor in residence. The Philharmonic will also appoint a creative chair for Latino music.
Kim Noltemy, the orchestra’s president and chief executive, said Dudamel and Salonen had already begun laying out plans for future programming and guest engagements. (Dudamel will continue to lead up to four weeks of concerts per season; Salonen, about six.) She said the new management structure would not constrain Harding; he will, for example, program the weeks that he conducts in Los Angeles.
“Music directors play a key role in the development of the orchestra, the arc of the orchestra’s artistic vision,” Noltemy said. “When you have two incredibly strong and brilliant people like Esa-Pekka and Gustavo, Daniel will be in the know but won’t be involved with the planning of their programs and projects.”
There is, she said, “a huge amount of space for everyone.”
In a statement, Salonen welcomed Harding’s appointment, saying: “The orchestra has put a key piece of its artistic leadership in place. My hope is that the beauty, optimism and openness of Los Angeles proves as transformative for Daniel as it has been for me. I look forward to collaborating with him well into the future.”
Harding said he had known and worked with Dudamel and Salonen for decades. “I am the music director,” he said, “and what we have with us is this amazing team.”
The selection of Harding signals a new direction for an orchestra that has long been known for innovation. Simon Rattle, a mentor of Harding’s, said of the Philharmonic, “What I find really fascinating is that they will have someone who is a real central European conductor, and who will give them a whole new range of colors after this wonderful long period with Gustavo.”
Rattle hired Harding as his assistant conductor at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in England when Harding was just a teenager. “This was an absolutely natural conductor — and you don’t see them very often,” Rattle said. “He is wonderfully concentrated and charismatic and simply full of music and energy.”
Harding was one of 35 candidates for the job in Los Angeles, and he was selected by a nine-member committee that drew from the orchestra, its staff and its management. He will keep his post with Santa Cecilia, as well as with Youth Music Culture the Greater Bay Area in Guangzhou, China. And he will continue as a part-time pilot for Air France, which he said had made him a better conductor.
“The discipline and the calm that’s required being an airline pilot and the teamwork has been a very satisfying and important learning experience for me,” he said.
Harding said that he planned to find a second home in Los Angeles but that he would keep his main residence in Paris, where his four children live.
He began studying trumpet at 8, and then reached the world’s attention when Rattle hailed him as a conducting prodigy. He went on to become an assistant to Claudio Abbado at the Berlin Philharmonic.
Harding later served as principal conductor and artistic director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, in Stockholm, and music director of the Orchestre de Paris. He helped found the renowned Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
For all his achievements in Europe, Harding has by his account struggled to find a perch in the United States, where his success has been mixed. In 2019, he told The New York Times that in those early years he was too accustomed to the cultures of European orchestras to understand what he described as the very different world of American classical music. “I just wasn’t ready for how some of the big U.S. orchestras worked,” he said, “and how they would relate to me.”
On Sunday, Harding said he was ready for this moment. “I think I am a lot more of a mature guy than I was,” he said. “I don’t think that should surprise anyone.”
Adam Nagourney is the classical music and dance reporter for The Times.
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