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Continuing a beautiful relationship with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice, Daniel will embark on a tour with the orchestra, performing works by the Strauss family in France in January 2012. More information next month!

Works will include a selection from the following:
LUMBYE Champagner-Galopp
STRAUSS, J. Jr. Russischer Marsch
STRAUSS, J, Jr. Perpetuum mobile; Musikalischer Scherz, op.257 (Musical Joke)
STRAUSS, J, Jr. Fledermaus: Overture
STRAUSS, J, Jr. Furst Bariatinsky-Marsch, Op. 212
STRAUSS, J, Jr. Niko-Polka, Op. 228
STRAUSS, J, Jr. Wein, Weib, und Gesang, op.333 (Wine, Women and Song)
STRAUSS, J, Jr. Vergnügungszug, op.281 (Pleasure Train Polka)
STRAUSS, J, Jr. Russische Marsch Fantasie, Op. 353
STRAUSS, J. Jr. Wiener Blut, op.354 (Vienna Blood)
STRAUSS, J. Jr. Unter Donner und Blitz, op.324 (Thunder and Lightning Polka)
STRAUSS, J. Jr. Zigeunerbaron (Gypsy Baron): Einzugsmarsch (Entrance March)
STRAUSS, J, Jr. An der schonen blauen Donau, op.314 (On the beautiful blue Danube)
STRAUSS, J, Jr. Bauern-Polka

One memory I have of New Year in Sydney as a child was to wake up and watch the Vienna Philharmonic perform live on TV. This New Year Concert became a ritual for me over the years.

It is with great joy that I announce an invitation to return to the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice to welcome the New Year at the Acropolis!

I look forward to being able to share the program of incredible music we are currently working on with you soon! Feel free to leave ideas in the comments field!

Wishing you all the best from Sicily,
Daniel.

It is with great pleasure and honour that we announce that Daniel won the most prestigious prize in the 5th Witold Lutosławski International Contest for Young Conductors, held in Poland once every 5 years.

After 3 elimination rounds, competing against 184 of the world’s best conductors from 43 countries, Daniel was awarded the greatest accolade of the competition, winner of the Orchestra’s Choice Prize for the Best Conductor in the 5th Witold Lutosławski International Contest for Young Conductors, which was voted for by every musician of the orchestra.

During the award ceremony, he was presented with a one-metre-high prize statue, an honorary Diploma of Music with Distinction and received immediate invitations for engagements with orchestras in Europe.

We’ve made many improvements to the Daniel Smith website!These include features such as:

• Now you can view pictures and see videos/audio of daniel’s performances in the new See & Hear section.
• See upcoming performances on any page
• See the website in Italian (more languages coming soon!!!)
• New facebook integration – post comments using your facebook account!

We hope that you enjoy the new website!

If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know in the comment section.

Whilst family members are in the eye of the storm, I thank everyone for their thoughts for Australia at this most incredible time. The anxious wait to see how your fellow Australians and family members will be tomorrow morning after the greatest cyclone (hurricane) to hit Australia in known history hits Queensland, keeps your mind in a constant state of unrest. It’s incredible to imagine the size of this force, with walls of water being reported at the height of four-storey buildings, wind gusts of around 300km/hr and the cyclone itself almost the size of the USA (see comparison picture above). Australia, we are thinking of you.

To everyone, Happy Australia Day! and I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year! These last few weeks have been extremely busy and I am delighted that we have a new website on the way thanks to the wonderful, Mr Andrew Chai. It will be filled with wonderful new content, including photo galleries, video clips, travel tips, press kits and all the new performance details for 2011 and 2012 which we are finalising now. We had lots of fun last week during a photo shoot for new press photos which will appear on the new site. Lots of wonderful performances coming up this year including performances with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice and also at the Antibes International Festival “Génération Virtuoses”. More details soon!

It’s that time of year again. That short fortnight when you are at home, resting from touring. For a conductor, this is precious time. It’s the time when you go through hundreds of scores, marking which ones need replacing or have gone missing, which editions are out of date or which need repairing. It’s a tedious job (and one that gets longer every year!). After this, I start preparing the programs for the next season (2010-2011). Ordering new scores, marking up scores in preparation for study and researching composers and the works I will perform over the next year. Then for the remainder of the time at home, it’s study (as much as possible!). With little time on the road to prepare a new score, these couple of weeks at home are all you really have to prepare for the entire year ahead. On another note, thank you all for your birthday messages. I’m sorry I can’t reply to them all, however I read every email and I had a wonderful day! I appreciate them greatly! Daniel.

Apologies to all those who had problems viewing the video of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No.3 in the last post. The video has been re-uploaded and is working again! To watch it, just scroll down to the last entry. This week, we have a new video for you! Haydn’s rarely performed Symphony No.87. This was the first time I had conducted the work and it was such a wonderful experience preparing and performing a work that I had never previously heard in concert or even on a recording! Bravi to all the orchestra!! Listening to the performance, I wonder, ‘in the last movement, how can the whole orchestra move their fingers, that fast, in time?!’ What brilliant musicians. Have just arrived in Sydney, Australia! As usual, Singapore Airlines get 5 stars from me. Last week, a truly wonderful experience, spending a week with Maestro Kurt Masur. Speechless.