The National Academy of Santa Cecilia Orchestra offered a very unique musical “Happy Birthday” to its Music Director, Maestro Daniel Harding, for his 50th birthday. In a surprise gesture at Bucharest’s Sala Palatului before a scheduled concert rehearsal, the musicians played a few bars from the third act of Wagner’s *Die Walküre*, followed immediately by the melody of the famous “Happy Birthday to You.” A stunned Maestro Harding responded with a broad smile, thanking the musicians he now considers his loyal travel companions.
The English conductor and the musicians from Rome’s foundation are on the second day of performances in Bucharest as guests of the Enescu Festival, part of a European tour that began on August 28th in Lucerne, Switzerland. The tour continues on September 2nd in Ljubljana (Slovenia), September 4th at the Grafenegg Festival (Austria), and concludes in Germany with a performance at the Rheingau Festival in Wiesbaden on September 5th and in Berlin on September 7th.
The concerts feature three exceptional pianists—Rudolf Buchbinder, Igor Levit, and Seong-Jin Cho—each performing different programs with the orchestra. They will be joined by mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená and the London Voices vocal ensemble, a group founded in 1973 with a long and rich concert career.
A common thread linking the chosen pieces is the encounter between the contemporary and the traditional, from Luciano Berio’s *Sinfonia* and *Folk Songs* to Verdi’s Overture to *La Forza del Destino*, and works by Beethoven and Debussy.
Following this extensive tour, Harding and the orchestra will begin rehearsals for *Die Walküre*, which will open the new concert season at Santa Cecilia on October 23rd, 25th, and 27th.