“Ausklang” (Finale)
Daniel Harding conducts Holst’s “Planets” 

Harding attracted attention early in his career as assistant to Sir Simon Rattle with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. This was followed by an assistantship with Claudio Abbado and the Berliner Philharmoniker, where Harding conducted for the first time in 1996. In the same year, he made his debut at the BBC Proms in London – as the youngest conductor in the history of the festival. By the age of 30, Harding had conducted every major orchestra in the world. In 2011, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra appointed him Honorary Conductor for Life. He was Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris from 2016 to 2019 and Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra from 2007 to 2017. But Daniel Harding has another passion: he has also been working as a pilot since 2018. For him, making music and flying complement each other: “I wanted to find something that would challenge other areas of my brain.”

Its outstanding ability and versatility make the Rundfunkchor Berlin, founded in 1925, a partner of major orchestras and conductors. The Rundfunkchor Berlin has performed regularly with the Berliner Philharmoniker since the early 1990s and has taken part in performances of Antonín Dvořák’s Stabat mater, Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet and György Ligeti’s Requiem. Joint staging projects include the famous performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion and St John Passion with Sir Simon Rattle and director Peter Sellars. The collaboration will also continue under chief conductor Kirill Petrenko, for example in Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah, Arnold Schoenberg’s oratorio The Jacob’s Ladder and Richard Strauss’ Elektra.