A regular guest with North America’s top orchestras, RAFAEL FRÜHBECK DE BURGOS will conduct the New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Toronto Symphony Orchestras in the 2012/13 season. He appears annually at the Tanglewood Music Festival and regularly with the Chicago Symphony, the National Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Born in Burgos, Spain in 1933, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos studied violin, piano, music theory, and composition at the conservatories in Bilbao and Madrid, and conducting at Munich’s Hochschule für Musik, where he graduated summa cum laude and was awarded the Richard Strauss Prize. From 2004-2011, he was Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Dresden Philharmonic, and in the 2012/13 season begins his post as Chief Conductor of the Danish National Orchestra.

Frühbeck has made extensive tours with such ensembles as the Philharmonia of London, the London Symphony Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Madrid, and the Swedish Radio Orchestra. He has toured North America with the Vienna Symphony, the Spanish National Orchestra, and the Dresden Philharmonic.

He was named Conductor of the Year by Musical America in 2011. Other numerous honors and distinctions he has been awarded include the Gold Medal of the City of Vienna; the Bundesverdienstkreutz of the Republic of Austria and Germany; the Gold Medal from the Gustav Mahler International Society; and the Jacinto Guerrero Prize, Spain’s most important musical award, conferred in 1997 by the Queen of Spain. In 1998 Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos received the appointment of “Emeritus Conductor” by the Spanish National Orchestra. He has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Navarra in Spain. Since 1975 he has been a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando.

Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos has recorded extensively for EMI, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Spanish Columbia, and Orfeo. Several of his recordings are considered to be classics, including his interpretations of Mendelssohn’s Elijah and St. Paul, Mozart’s Requiem, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Bizet’s Carmen, and the complete works of Manuel de Falla.