A few weeks ago, I traveled to Stockholm to speak with English conductor Daniel Harding and hear a rehearsal and concert with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, which Harding has led since 2007. (Disclosure: The orchestra covered my flights and hotel for the trip.) Harding and I had lunch together at a restaurant so fancy that it didn’t have a menu—the chef came out and told us what ingredients were fresh that day—but Harding barely seemed to register the food, focusing intently on answering my questions. We talked for almost two hours about the long-term relationship between conductor and orchestra, how music and aviation overlap, and the constant presence of music in Harding’s head. After the concert that evening—with works of Schumann, Brahms, and Brett Dean—I noticed that Harding was still humming a snippet from the piece he had just conducted while he took his bow.
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