by Agnes Wall Ströberg, Gy1

Conductor Daniel Harding has done many things in his life. He started his musical career playing the trumpet from age five or six. And he has worked with orchestras all over the world from age of twenty-one, when he first conducted the Berlin Philharmonic.

At the time of our interview, he has just finished the morning shift rehearsing Brahms’s Requiem. We meet up at the concert hall Berwaldhallen and I ask him about when he realised he wanted to become a conductor.

Harding: Very early! Even before I went to boarding school, when I was still at a normal school in Oxford, I asked if I could conduct the wind band, the school orchestra, anything. Since I was the only one interested in doing that, they often let me. In England at that time, everybody like me who played an instrument played in a youth orchestra. But as a ten year old playing the trumpet, they often told me: ”You just play the very loud bits, and wait.” So I sat there for three hours in the evening, just counting the rests. Because I was bored, I used to bring along the score. The least I could do when sitting there was to read it. Then I started to become interested in why the conductor did what he did. I started to understand the job a conductor has, and what difference it makes. By the time I went to Manchester, I was sure that I wanted to be a conductor.

Everyone at the boarding school played an instrument, so in order to get in, you had to play something. The students were there because they chose music as the special thing in their life. It was a slightly strange atmosphere to be in a school just with other ‘crazy’ people, but I was surrounded with people who had the same obsession as I did. Our conversations were brilliant. As fifteen or sixteen year olds, we all had ideas about the world, and we were convinced our way of seeing it was right. This led to a lot of interesting arguments, and I learned so much at that time. It played a  big part in cementing my interest in music and conducting.

Wall Ströberg: I know that you were an assistant to the famous conductor Claudio Abbado, as well as Simon Rattle. Did you learn anything from them you want to share?

Harding: So much, it’s hard to just mention one thing. But there were differences in my relationship to them because they are two very different people with very different conducting styles. I met Simon Rattle when I was sixteen. He’s a guy who uses a lot of practical thinking. 27 years later, he and I still discuss technical solutions to conducting problems, or how to get the orchestra to understand what you want from them. I often watched him rehearse and his way of taking a problem apart, fixing it, and putting it back together had a huge influence on me.

I knew Abbado a bit later, and his mind was very different. He didn’t like to talk about music in a very clear way, he didn’t feel comfortable describing what he did. He had an unbelievably good conducting technique which he learned when he was studying in Vienna. It was very precise and classical, and he developed it throughout the years to his own unconventional technique. But he didn’t want to talk about it, so the way I learned from him was by watching him conduct and trying to understand.

Wall Ströberg: What do you think makes a great conductor?

Harding: I believe if you take ten great conductors, you would find ten different reasons for calling them great. There are so many parts of this job, not just waving your hand physically to make something happen in the orchestra. For a great conductor, I think the body language is only ten percent of what you are trying to achieve. Instead, the most important thing for a conductor is awareness. A conductor could have great hand motions that can describe everything they want, but if they aren’t aware of what the orchestra is really doing, nothing the conductor wants to do will work. Even if they only have decent hand motions but are able to hear and understand why something works or why it doesn’t, they are still able to make magic happen. Conducting happens above the neck, and not so much below.

Wall Ströberg: Do you ever regret working with music?

Harding: All the time! I mean, it’s an emotionally expensive job. I look at my brother and sister, they both work in offices, and when they leave their jobs for the day and get home, that’s two different situations for them. They get their private lives back as soon as they come home again. That’s both the benefit and the drawback of working with music. You’re living and working with the thing you love most. When there’s a problem, you can’t escape it. If you have a bad day as a conductor, you feel like your whole life is bad. Still, because my personal life and my work is the same thing, I see it as a balance.

Wall Ströberg: Do you think it was beneficial for you to start conducting at such a young age?

Harding: I’m happy with what I’m doing now, so in that sense yes. It would be very ungrateful for me to say I wish I had a different life, because I love doing what I do. I can sometimes look back on decisions I made and wonder what would have happened if I’d done things differently, but in the end it’s pointless. I did learn a lot from starting to conduct early, partly from making a lot of mistakes, but you have to make them. Conducting takes a very long time to learn, and if you start at a young age I believe you have the ability to take risks because you have the time for it.

Wall Ströberg: Do you get to spend as much time with your family as you’d like?

Harding: No. It’s tricky. In the few last years, I decided to conduct less and spend more time with them. But I have to say, part of that decision is not saying I want to escape from music, it’s saying I want to give more space for thinking about music so I can do it better. Music is not in conflict with my life, it’s the traveling. That’s just an inconvenience of doing what I do.

Wall Ströberg: Do you have a special memory from a concert you were conducting, good or bad?

Harding: I have so many good memeories, but there was one very famous bad one from when I was chief conductor in Trondheim. It was a very important night for the city of Trondheim because that night Rosenborg Ballklub would meet Real Madrid in the Champions league. This small town in Norway had a very strong football team and were going to play against the most famous team in the world, you can imagine the pride! We had a concert at the same time as the match. Before the concert I had some food, and then the concert started. The first half was a contemporary piece of Norwegian music. During the intermission, I started to feel tired but didn’t think much about it.

I went up on stage again to conduct Brahms’s Third symphony, and suddenly it felt like the whole world had stopped. My hands were still moving but my brain had frozen. And then everything I’d had for dinner came out of my mouth again.

I’ll never forget the silence in the concert hall, the utter shock. After the concert I went to bed because I was so sick, but the musicians took that opportunity, and ran from the concert hall to be able to see the match. I used to joke about that, to this day I still don’t know if someone put something in my food just so they could leave early!

For years afterwards I had anxiety going on stage, but I’m never nervous before a concert anymore unless I feel the orchestra and I are not prepared enough. I feel pressure, but that’s different.

Wall Ströberg: What are your thoughts about continuing as chief conductor for the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra?

Harding: I’m very happy about that. As a conductor I have the joy of using other people’s skills, ideas and abilities to create music, and that’s a gift. The problem is, I have to depend on other people because I can’t practise on my own like a musician can. With the Swedish Radio Orchestra, I feel like I’m comfortable making music because we understand each other so well. To continue that twelve-year-long collaboration makes me honored.

Wall Ströberg: You have worked in several orchestras, all over the world. Are they any differences?

Harding: Yes. Orchestras are as different as people. We have these ideas about national stereotypes, but the more we get to know a person from another country we realise that that’s not true, of course. However, with many orchestras it’s almost true!

I have encountered Italian orchestras that play like we think italians play, with great passion and emotion. They love to play at concerts because they play like every concert is the most important thing that has ever happened. Generally the Germans like everything organized and prepared before they feel ready to play. So even though people are different, orchestras have a little bit of the cliché characteristics. That’s very healthy for a conductor, to learn to deal with the different ways.

Wall Ströberg: Have you ever encountered an orchestra where the musicians didn’t want to cooperate? What do you do then?

Harding: I have about twelve orchestras that I’ve continued working with throughout the years, because I love to create music with them. But five or six times maybe, I’ve encountered orchestras where the musicians and I didn’t understand each other. Some of it happened when I was very young, so maybe if I were to go back twenty years later it would have worked. Sometimes it’s just because your idea of what music is and how it should sound are so different. Then the only thing you can do is move on, to try to find an orchestra you get along better with.

Wall Ströberg: Why do you think classical music is important?

Harding: I think that complex discussions on important issues are essential for any society. Classical music is one of the expressions we have for our thoughts about things we see as important. The abstract part of music gives us an opportunity to try to reflect and understand things that we don’t know how to put into words.

Some people ask: ”But what about pop music?” And sometimes a pop song can express a simple message with lots of power behind it. But it tends to be just that – simple. “I’m sad” or “I’m happy” or “I loved him and he’s gone”. Then you look at the way Schubert deals with the same things, and you realise that the complexity and the emotion is far, far greater. It’s like an onion, it takes time to peel off the layers and you just find more and more greatness in the music. Human beings are extremely complex. We need something to reflect that.

Wall Ströberg: Do you have an upcoming event or a concert you’re excited about?

Harding: We have had a big tour now with the orchestra, which always is exciting. I like to introduce the orchestra to new audiences, as well as getting to play in different concert halls with different acoustics. You feel inspired by the surroundings. And as you play the same piece of music again and again, you get the chance to make the music come alive and develop even more, not just play it twice and move on. Touring is for me very special in that way.

Wall Ströberg: Do you have any advice for young musicians or people who want to become conductors?

Harding: For the conductors, there is one key thing. You have got to find a way to do it. And you have to make your own opportunities. If you want to be a conductor, you have to persuade people to play while you learn to conduct. You don’t need many people, but nobody can teach you how to conduct in an empty room. You need at least four string players and four wind players. Before you have a career, you have no practise at all.

Then it’s just about noticing how the way you move affects the orchestra, and which shapes, sounds and colors you can bring forth.

The second thing is to go and see other people conduct. Go to a rehearsal and ask yourself: “What do I like? What don’t I like? What would I do to make it better?”

For people who want to be musicians, I say yes! That is a wonderful thing to dream about being. It’s hard work and it requires an enormous amount of self awareness and self criticism, and you will have to know which people will really listen to you and give you advice that will help you to grow. But it’s a profession where you’ll never get bored or run out of inspiration in your life. If you have that thought in your head and you are ready to work hard, you will have the happiest job in the world.