John Harding

violin

A student of the Robert Pikler, John Harding has had an extremely successful international career as soloist, teacher, concertmaster, chamber musician, conductor and recording artist which has taken him all over the world.
In 1972 he was invited to the United States by David Zinman to study conducting, at the same time continuing his violin studies with Joseph Silverstein, winning the Albert Spalding Prize for the most outstanding instrumentalist at Tanglewood in 1975 and later a position as first violin with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.
In 1985 his piano trio was invited to Hong Kong where he became principal teacher of violin at the newly formed Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. Two years later, he moved to Europe to become leader of the highly acclaimed Orlando Quartet. With that ensemble he performed over 700 concerts, recorded many major chamber works, including the complete Mozart String Quintets for BIS, performed at all the major festivals of Europe, made the award-winning Philips video, Quartet, and collaborated with such artists as Murray Perahia, Arnold Steinhardt, Malcolm Frager, Nobuko Imai, Norbert Brainin etc.
At that time he was also appointed Professor at the Royal Conservatorium in the Hague, where he taught violin and chamber music for ten years. Yevgeni Svetlanov chose him as leader of the Residentie Orchestra where he remained for a further five years and for a time, he was Guest Leader of the London Symphony Orchestra.
In 1996 he returned to Australia at the invitation of Edo de Waart and the Sydney Symphony to become Co-concertmaster and Associate Conductor from 1996 to 2001. He was Artistic Director of the James Fairfax Young Artists’ Program and until recently was Conjoint Professor of Music at Newcastle University. In May 1998, he received an Honorary Doctorate from Newcastle University in recognition of his outstanding contribution to Australian music. In 2004 John Harding was the Artistic Director of the Australian National Academy of Music.
As soloist John has performed with many orchestras and gave the first performance of Penderecki’s Violin Concerto in Melbourne and Brisbane with the composer directing in 1983. John Harding’s numerous roles in Australian music have included those of Artistic Director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, leader of the Australia Ensemble and leader of the Sydney String Quartet.
John frequently conducts all of the Australian orchestras, and has made over 30 recordings for various labels including BIS, Clavigram, ABC Classics and Tall Poppies labels.

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