Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Announces Daniel Harding as Music Director

Harding will lead the orchestra and chorus from October 2024 for an initial five-year term

Daniel Harding succeeds Sir Antonio Pappano, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia's Music Director from 2005 to 2023, who will become Director Emeritus. He joins the likes of previous prestigious Principal Conductors and Music Directors, including Igor Markevich, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Daniele Gatti, and Myung Whun Chung. 

Harding's role will begin with performances of Puccini’s Tosca, which marks the centenary of Puccini’s death, and will expand the symphonic output of the orchestra with works from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He will focus on composers like Strauss, Wagner, those from the Viennese school, etc. In addition to presenting a full cycle of Mahler symphonies, the first season will also include the performance of Suk’s “Asrael” Symphony.

Also in his first season, the organization will launch a series of sacred music performed in one of Rome's most beautiful churches, starting with performances of Verdi's Requiem.   

Along with the announcement of the role, Harding and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia will join a new partnership with Deutsche Grammophon. The label will release recordings of Harding’s inaugural performances with the Orchestra, with future releases announced at a later date. 

“The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia is an orchestra and chorus of extraordinary warmth and generosity, who love to tell stories and transmit their enthusiasm for the music they’re playing," Daniel Harding said. "Over the 25 years of working together with the orchestra we have explored a wide range of repertoire and forged a friendship that now becomes something very significant for all of us. It is a beautiful gift to be given the chance to become Music Director of a world class orchestra of such ambition in a city of incomparable historical and cultural significance.”

"For us, placing our trust in Daniel Harding means not only having the opportunity to work with one of the greatest talents around, but also not interrupting this path, while transmitting new stimuli and enriching our musical life with new and different suggestions and ideas," writes Michele dall’Ongaro, President-Superintendent of Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. "This, then, is a time to celebrate, and to prepare ourselves for an ever more exciting future thanks to the great power of music.”

Harding was also recently announced as the next Music Director of China's Youth Music Culture Guangzhou (YMCG) for an initial term of five years, beginning in 2024.

Born in Oxford, he is presently Music and Artistic Director at the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, as well as Conductor Laureate of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. He works regularly with some of the world's best orchestras, including the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra.

In 2018 he was named Artistic Director of the Anima Mundi Festival, and prior posts include music director of the Orchestre de Paris (2016–19) and principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (2007–17).

Harding began his career assisting Simon Rattle at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, with which he made his professional debut in 1994. He went on to assist Claudio Abbado at the Berlin Philharmonic and made his debut with that orchestra at the 1996 Berlin Festival.