On a stormy day, more than 34,000 feet above Paris, Air France Flight 1205 was preparing to descend. Passengers awoke from their naps in a daze as flight attendants began checking seat backs and tray tables.
Then I heard a voice from the cockpit over the intercom informing me of the weather (cloudy, 54 degrees Celsius) and the remaining flight time (about 30 minutes).
“Thank you for choosing Air France,” said Daniel Harding, co-pilot of the flight. “And remember, rehearsal is at 6 p.m.”
The plane was filled with whistles and cheers. Mr. Harding, 49, an Air France pilot, also happens to be one of the world's top orchestra conductors. And on this December day, he was flying his ensemble, the Orchester National Academy of Santa Cecilia, from its home base in Rome to Paris to begin a European tour. (Dozens of unsuspecting civilians were also on board.)
In recent years, the British-born Harding has enjoyed a dual career conducting Mozart and Mahler symphonies one day and piloting commercial flights to Paris, Milan, Stockholm and Tunis the next. His career has often been a dueling one. He enjoys the tight control of flying, checking fuel numbers, analyzing weather patterns, and tallying passengers and cargo. He is also energized by taking risks in his music.
“In flight, you have to identify all the threats and stay away from them,” he said. “In music, it's the opposite. We have to get as close to catastrophe as possible.”
Harding is a rare figure in commercial aviation, a pilot with a rich artistic career. And while in the high-pressure, all-consuming field of classical music, where stars are often expected to show absolute dedication to their craft, he was a maverick, reaching beyond the concert hall. It shows that there is life in the world.
“I don't think it's realistic to say that just because you love something you should do it 24 hours a day, every day,” he says. “I don't think that's human.”
Renowned conductor Simon Rattle, who first met Harding when he was a 16-year-old genius conductor with sandy hair, called Harding “one of the greats'' who could tackle almost any piece with any orchestra. He said it happened.
“Flying gave him a musical center, a balance,” Rattle said. “It made him a better musician and a gentler person.”
That December day, Harding was concentrating in the cockpit with a cup of coffee by his side. He was still in contact with the Orchester de Santa Cecilia, Italy's unofficial national symphony orchestra since 1908, and had offered to fly to his term, which begins in October.
Now he had to perform for the musicians. He was worried about landing.
“If I hit a plane hard today, they're going to be talking about it for the next 20 years,” he said.
In the cabin, musicians were cheering on the leader. They joked about what to call him. Maestro? pilot? captain? They finished their two-hour journey listening to music and singing “Volare.” At one point, clarinetist Alessandro Carbonare, seated in the 19th row, played an excerpt from Puccini's “Tosca.”
When Carbonare told his mother that Harding had flown the orchestra to Paris, she did not believe him.
“Nobody can imagine it,” he said. I just hope that they arrive safely in Paris. That should be enough. ”
As the plane descended, Harding invited Santa Cecilia's concertmaster and assistant conductor into the cockpit to watch the landing. Nervous laughter could be heard on board when the plane encountered turbulence.
As the Paris skyline came into view, the flight attendant announced over the intercom, “Prepare for Maestro's landing.”
Harding was born in Oxford, England, into a family of engineering lecturers and university administrators who were also amateur musicians. He began playing the trumpet at the age of eight after hearing a Christmas performance of Handel's Messiah. At home, he dabbled in conducting, moving his arms to the tune of recordings of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. At the age of 13, he enrolled at Chetham School of Music, a boarding school in Manchester.
When Harding was 17, his teacher sent a letter to Rattle, then 37 and music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, explaining his preternatural skill conducting Schoenberg's “Pierrot in the Moon” at school. . Rattle invited Harding and his classmates to Birmingham to work on this piece.
“That was kind of surprising,” Rattle recalls. He took Harding under his wing, employed him as his assistant, and gave him a steady diet of ham sandwiches.
Harding moved into classical music with astonishing speed. At the age of 17, he conducted part of the rehearsals in Birmingham under Rattle's watch. At the age of 19, he landed a dream job as an assistant to Claudio Abbado, then chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, who inspired him to become a conductor. He made his debut with the orchestra at the age of 21 and signed his first recording contract at the age of 22.
“It all seems completely absurd now,” he said. “I didn't realize at the time how far it was from my abilities. If I had any perspective, I would have been paralyzed with fear.”
Abbado, who came to call his pupil “my little genius,” taught Harding to make himself superfluous to the orchestra so that the musicians could experiment more freely.
“He was always trying to break out of the machine,” Harding recalled.
Harding went on to hold prestigious posts at the top of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Orchester de Paris. Abbado played a key role in the formation of the famous Mahler Chamber Orchestra, which he founded in 1997 and led the ensemble for eight years.
However, there were also challenges. After several tense appearances in the United States early in his career, he struggled to find a music director position. Some musicians found him arrogant and aloof, and were irritated by his habit of speaking at length from the podium. (“I come here and just keep talking, talking, talking,” Harding later said. “And that just doesn’t work here.”)
When Harding was in his mid-30s, he wanted to hone his communication style and technique and hired a command coach. (Harding never studied at a conservatory.) Around the same time, he went through a divorce, which he says left him “unfocused and indecisive.”
Harding had a busy performance schedule. However, as he approached his 40th birthday, he reflected on his interests outside of classical music. He decided to train as a pilot because he thought he had the luxury of “taking a little time just for myself to learn something.”
He has been fascinated by airplanes since he was a child, playing with the flight simulator on his home computer, a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. He first flew in a small plane when he was a teenager, invited by a musician from a Birmingham orchestra. During that flight, he said, he became captivated by “the feeling and the beauty of flight.”
In 2014, Harding enrolled in a flight school in the south of France for a birthday challenge. In his spare time between concerts and rehearsals, he studied subjects such as aerodynamics and aviation law. At one point, he set up a flight simulator in his basement. A few years later, he earned his private and commercial pilot's license and was also certified to fly an Airbus A320.
To get the Air France job, he underwent a series of tests, interviews and psychological evaluations. He cited his musical background to reassure the airline that he would get along well with his colleagues.
“Being a conductor is the ultimate team activity,” he said.
Harding Now operates Air France's medium-haul flights around Europe and North Africa for about one week each month, scheduled around performances. (He has piloted hundreds of flights and racked up about 1,300 flight hours since joining the airline in 2021.) The arrangement has mostly worked, though sometimes he has been forced to fill in for unwell conductors. There have also been times when flight operations have been canceled at the last minute.
Air France has long counted Olympic athletes, astronauts and doctors among its pilots, but not other conductors.
The company said in a statement that it wants to support employees with special talents by offering flexibility in their schedules. An Air France spokesperson added that Mr Harding had been trained to meet “the same high standards to ensure the highest level of flight safety”.
Lucien Delisle, a classical music fan and pilot for Air France, was surprised to hear that Harding was working for the airline. He recognized Harding's name from the radio.
Delisle, who now flies regularly with Harding, said the conductor has a passion for difficult routes such as mountains, short runways and volcanoes.
“He lives for adventure,” Deryl said.
When Flight 1205 touched down in Paris around noon, Santa Cecilia's musicians applauded and shouted “Bravo!” As they disembarked, Harding, in a neat navy uniform with gold braid, greeted each of them with handshakes and hugs. Some players also took selfies.
“For the first time I heard of a man who flies planes in the morning and conducts concerts in the evening,” violinist Leonardo Micucci told him.
Mr Harding said he was satisfied with the smooth flight and gentle landing.
“There was a little temptation to emotion,” he says. “But I was able to put that aside. This emotion is tonight.”
In the afternoon, Harding returned to her Paris apartment to see her family and took an hour's nap. Around 5 p.m., he dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans and headed to the Philharmonie de Paris concert hall to rehearse for that night's performances of Debussy, Brahms and Prokofiev.
Backstage, stocked with bananas, lemons, nuts and cookies, he pored over the sheet music and consulted with the evening's soloist, violinist Lisa Batiashvili. She described Harding as a “true pilot” on the podium.
“He's very flexible,” she said. “And they're ready to accept your ideas and make you feel comfortable on stage.”
Looking back on that day's journey, Harding said he realized there were similarities between command and flying. Both require deep awareness and the ability to step back.
“No one wants to go to a concert or get on a plane when the leader is under high pressure from beginning to end,” he said. “You have to learn to breathe.”
“This morning, we kept everyone safe. That mission was accomplished,” he added. “Now, it's time for a great concert.”
He then picked up his baton, adjusted his bow tie and headed for the stage.
