Daniel Harding (born 31 August 1975 in Oxford) is a British conductor.
Harding studied trumpet at Chetham's School of Music and was a member of the National Youth Orchestra at age 13.[1] 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, Abbado named him his assistant with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.[2] 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.[3] Harding has stated that he has never had formal conducting lessons