Daniel Harding and London Philharmonic Orchestra

Date: Feb 22-23 — 7:30 pm Venue: NCPA Price: 280-1,680 yuan Daniel Harding is a British conductor. Harding was born in Oxford. He studied trumpet at Chetham’s School of Music and was a member of the National Youth Orchestra at age 13. At age 17, Harding assembled a group of musicians to perform Pierrot Lunaire of Arnold Schoenberg, and sent a tape of the performance to Simon Rattle in Birmingham. After listening to this tape, Rattle hired Harding as an assistant to him at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for a year, from 1993-1994. Harding then attended the University of Cambridge, but after his first year at university, Claudio Abbado named him his assistant with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Harding first conducted the Berlin Philharmonic at age 21. At the time of his first conducting appearance at The Proms in 1996, he was then the youngest-ever conductor to appear there. Harding has stated that he has never had formal conducting lessons. The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) is one of five permanent symphony orchestras based in London. It was founded by the conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent in 1932 as a rival to the existing London Symphony and BBC Symphony Orchestras. The founders’ ambition was to build an orchestra the equal of any European or American rival. Between 1932 and the World War II the LPO was widely judged to have succeeded in this regard. After the outbreak of war the orchestra’s private backers withdrew and the players reconstituted the LPO as a self-governing cooperative. Contact: 400-610-3721