8 Wednesday February 23 2022 | the times
arts
commercial flights are. So why not try
to combine both jobs?”
What made him choose Air France?
Or was it vice versa? “I live in
France, and a lot of the wonderful
people who fed my enthusiasm
for flying worked for Air
France,” Harding replies.
“Also, for completely
understandable reasons,
few airlines either have the
culture or the desire to say,
‘We can accommodate some
employees who do other
things in their lives.’ Air
France has always taken pride
in having a mixture of people
from interesting backgrounds, such
as Olympic athletes and astronauts.
Well, now the company has a
conductor.”
Covid delayed his plans, but last
September Harding finally joined the
company and went through a rigorous
period of requalifying and training.
So how will he organise his life? What
takes priority: baton or joystick? “The
music schedule will always come first,
because it is usually decided years in
advance, whereas pilots’ schedules
come very late,” he says. “I just have
to make sure that when I am planning
concerts I leave enough time to
honour my commitment to Air France
and their safety requirements. It’s all
about safety.”
Does he sense any irony or
psychological tension in his new
dual-existence? After all, a conductor’s
task is all about generating
excitement, whereas an airline pilot
wants as little excitement as possible.
“Yes, but I think that’s liberated me asa conductor,” Harding says. “My
feeling when conducting an orchestra
now is: what’s the worst thing that
can go wrong, compared with flying
a commercial plane? I think I
understand better now how important
it is to take risks when you are making
music. As Nikolaus Harnoncourt [the
maverick Austrian conductor] said,
‘Beauty in music is found on the edge
of catastrophe.’ ”
Harding’s new career hasn’t
diminished his ambitions as a
conductor. He accepts that his job in
Sweden can’t go on for ever, fruitful
though the relationship has been. A
brief tenure as music director of the
Orchestre de Paris didn’t work out
(it was Harding who pulled the plug).
His next move, insiders believe, may
be to accept a music directorship at
a leading opera house. “Doing opera
is an enormous commitment of time,
but when it comes together the artistic
rewards cannot be equalled by
anything else,” he says.
What do his colleagues in the music
world think of his flying career?
Supportive or sceptical? “I have no
idea what expressions of incredulity
go on behind my back,” Harding says,
laughing, “but to my face it’s been
amazing how many seem to have an
instinctive understanding of why I find
flying planes so satisfying.
“Back in the autumn, when I joined
Air France, I had to drop a couple of
concerts with the LSO. It was
unavoidable if I was going to make the
training work. I was expecting difficult
conversations with the musicians and
management. Instead, I had nothing
but encouragement.”How did he manage to fit all this
in around the day job, which has
involved being music director of the
Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra
in Stockholm for the past 15 years,
as well as guest-conducting some
of the world’s top ensembles?
“The weird thing about
conducting is that I can
spend an enormous number
of weeks away from home but
still have a lot of time
to myself,” he says. “In
Stockholm, for instance, we
rehearse from 10am to 2.30pm
each day. So I realised I had
hours each afternoon when I
could be challenging my brain
instead of watching Netflix or
wandering round the park.”
It was after completing his “type
rating” (the training to fly a specific
aircraft — in his case, an Airbus —
culminating in the pilot making the
transition from simulator to real-life
flights) that Harding realised he didn’t
just want the qualification: he wanted
to be a real commercial airline pilot.
“Six of us went off to an airfield in
France for our final tests,” he says.
“Within three days the other five
were starting their line training, flying
under instruction with passengers.
Me? I went off and conducted
Mahler’s Eighth Symphony at the
Edinburgh Festival!”
Was it no longer a thrill to conduct
500 people in a massive symphony?
“Of course,” Harding says. “My joy at
going back to the orchestra was
enormous. But that was the day I
realised that I was qualified in exactly
the same way as people actually flyingW
hether
onlookers call it
a midlife crisis,
abrupt change
of direction
or belated
fulfilment of
a teenage dream, Daniel Harding
certainly has the classical-music world
chattering. Only 46, yet with three
decades as a conductor behind him
(a protégé of Simon Rattle, he made
his debut with the City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra at 16), he has
become a fully qualified airline pilot.
It will probably be years before
impish orchestral musicians stop
saying “doors to automatic” just as
he’s about to give the downbeat at the
start of a rehearsal. Harding won’t
worry about that. This month, after
years of training fitted around his
concert schedule, he made his debut
flights with Air France, his new
employer. He plans to pursue a
double life: weeks of conducting
work around the world interspersed
with periods when he will be piloting
an Airbus for Air France on
middle-haul routes.
Harding had always had a
fascination with flying, and had taken
occasional lessons for years. Yet it
wasn’t until his 40th birthday was
looming, with a painful divorce behind
him, that he decided to take his
hobby a step further and work
towards his private pilot’s licence.
“I had been conducting pretty much
all the time since I was in my teens,”
he says. “I made my London
Symphony Orchestra debut when I
was 18, my Berlin Philharmonic debut
when I was 21 and my La Scala debut
soon after that.
“It was all ludicrously precocious.
There was this little voice in my head
saying that maybe it would be good to
think about the way my life was going.
It’s one thing to go round collecting
wonderful experiences, but at some
point you need to look in the bag
and see what’s there. And also allow
yourself the joy of discovering
something different.”
What was so gripping about flying?
“One fascination for me was that you
need to learn a little about a lot of
things,” Harding says. “I had to brush
up on physics and maths, and learn
about the weather, and mechanical
and electrical things that have never
been my strong suit. It ticked a lot
of boxes.”
One thing led to another. First,
Harding learnt to fly a single-engine
plane “when the weather was nice —
like a Sunday driver”. Then he took
the exams you need to fly when the
weather isn’t good. After that he did
the training “that allows you to take
a few passengers and earn a bit of
money”. Finally, he learnt to fly as part
of a team, “because one fundamental
of being an airline pilot is teamwork”.
It sounds like a long and
time-consuming process. “It is,”
Harding says, “but I’ve never met a
passenger on an aircraft who isn’t
happy to know that.”
ACTION PRESS/SHUTTERSTOCKHow this top conductor
became an airline pilot
Daniel Harding is
juggling his two
loves. ‘It’s liberated
me,’ he tells
Richard Morrison
Now, when
conducting
my feeling
is: what’s
the worst
thing that
can go
wrong?
Daniel Harding flying
with Air France and,
top, conducting the
Vienna Philharmonic
in 2019