Daniel Harding has today been named as the new Music Director of the Orchestra and Chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, starting in October 2024 for an initial five-year term. He succeeds Sir Antonio Pappano, who has held the post to great acclaim since 2005, and who will become Director Emeritus.

Harding will start his tenure with performances of Puccini’s Tosca (marking the centenary of the composer’s death), continuing a long tradition of the Orchestra opening its season with a concert performance of an opera. His first season will also include Verdi’s Requiem in one of the city’s great basilicas, and Suk’s Asrael Symphony. Harding’s time with the orchestra will also include a focus on 19th and 20th century works by composers including Strauss, works from the Viennese school, by Wagner, and a full cycle of Mahler Symphonies.

A new partnership between Deutsche Grammophon and Daniel Harding and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia has also been announced; releases will draw on Harding’s inaugural performances with the Orchestra, including Tosca, with future audio and audiovisual plans 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,’ said Harding. ‘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.’

Harding is currently Music and Artistic Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, a position he will leave in 2025 after 19 seasons – together with the ensemble and Maria João Pires he won the Gramophone Concerto Award in 2015 for Beethoven's Piano Concertos Nos 3 & 4. He was also Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris from 2016 to 2019, and Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra from 2007 to 2017, and holds the title of Conductor Laureate of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with whom he has worked for over 20 years, and with whom he won the Opera Award in 2003 for Britten’s The Turn of the Screw.

In succeeding Pappano at the head of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Harding adds his name to other predecessors including Igor Markevich, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Daniele Gatti, and Myung Whun Chung. Under Pappano the orchestra has received four Gramophone Awards: for Aida (Opera Award in 2016), Jonas Kaufmann's 'Verismo Arias' album (Recital in 2011), Rossini's Stabat Mater (Editor's Choice Award, also 2011), and Madama Butterfly (the Opera Award in 2009).