Daniel Huertas, born in 1996 and raised in Campo de Criptana, is a young Spanish conductor whose interest includes classical and contemporary repertory. He was awarded the Neeme Järvi Prize in 2022 and won second prize in the Juventudes Musicales de España Competition in 2023.
He has recently conducted Boulez's ...explosante fixe... with the Ensemble Intercontemporain during Festival Manifeste in Paris, the Castilla y León Symphony Orchestra in an pedagogical project featuring Elgar's Enigma Variations, and the AVS Philharmonie in a program featuring Schubert's Rosamunde and Dvořák's 7th Symphony. He has conducted programme Sakura with the Orchestre des Pays de Savoie, including six concerts and three school concerts throughout the Haute Savoie region.
He has conducted Arxis Ensemble at RESIS Festival in La Coruña, including the Galician premiere of Lachenmann's Mouvement (-vor der Erstarrung) and the Spanish premiere of Rihm's Pol, Kolchis, and Nucleus. At the Lucerne Festival, he premiered José Luis Valdivia's Cyberpunk for orchestra, and conducted works by Saariaho, Strauss, Rihm, Schoenberg, and Benjamin. At the same festival, he premiered several new pieceswith the Ensemble Modern International Academy. He has performed Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat in Campo de Criptana with actor Emilio Gavira.
In terms of operatic repertoire, he has conducted a production of Britten's The Turn of the Screw and premiered the opera Dernière Expédition au Pays des Merveilles, composed by Nicolas Roulive in the second edition of OperaLab in Geneva. He has been assistant conductor for a production of Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortilèges in Tenerife with Jordi Francés.
Parallelly, he currently holds assistant conductor positions at the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris and the Spanish National Orchestra and Choir in Madrid, working regularly with Pierre Bleuse and David Afkham, as well as other guest conductors such as Marzena Diakun and Cornelius Meister. He has worked on pieces such as Bruckner's Fifth Symphony, Mahler's Fourth and Sixth Symphonies, Pierre Boulez's Sur Incises and Cummings ist der Dichter, Saariaho's Semafor and Lichtbogen, and has collaborated closely with composers such as Rebecca Saunders, Aureliano Cattaneo, Martín Matalon, Michael Jarrell and Raquel García Tomás, among others.
His upcoming engagements include the premiere of Ariadna Alsina's new opera IKARIA as part of the Oh!pera cycle at the Liceu Theater in Barcelona. In november he will conduct the Ensemble Intercontemporain again in a concert featuring at the Paris Conservatory, featuring new five pieces. He will make his debut with the Spanish National Orchestra conducting De Falla's El Retablo de Maese Pedro next season, and will conduct Beethoven's 8th Symphony at the AIMS Festival in Solsona. In September, he will assist David Afkham in a new semi-staged production of Alban Berg's Wozzeck.
Daniel studied conducting with Arturo Tamayo in Donostia-San Sebastián and Lugano, and with Laurent Gay at the Haute École de Musique de Genève. In 2024, he participated in the conducting academy of the Lucerne Festival. He has received masterclasses from Jaap van Zweden, Peter Eötvös, Sir George Benjamin, among others.
