Conductor. A prolific maestro who had a long career on both sides of the Atlantic, he shall possibly be best remembered for championing the works of Spanish composers. Born Rafael Frühbeck to a mixed German and Spanish family, he was raised in northern Spain, took up the the violin and piano early, studied at the conservatories of Bilabo and Madrid, then spent three years in the Spanish Army where he developed his podium skills by leading a military band. Following his discharge, he studied at Munich's Hochschule für Musik where he won the Richard Strauss Prize and launched his career, taking his stage name from his native city. From the start, de Burgos made a point of programming the works of his fellow Spaniards, not only those by such well known artists as Enrique Granados, Isaac Albeniz, and Manuel de Falla, but also pieces by such lesser lights as Luis de Pablo. Never content to stay in one place, he was over the years either Maestro or Principal Guest Conductor of Turin's RAI National Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the National Symphony of Spain, and other ensembles. He made his 1969 American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra beginning a long association and was also to be heard many times with the Boston Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, DC. In 1985 he was named to head the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, a job in which he only lasted a year and a half due to resentment of his negative public comments about the brass section. Though he kept a home in the city made famous by Papa Hemingway in "The Sun Also Rises", he was to keep up a busy schedule, in February of 2011 called to the podium of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and also in 2011 being named conductor of the year by "Musical America". He expressed a desire to keep going to the end and he did, though his increasing frailty was apparent, typified by a National Symphony Orchestra event two months before his death during which he collapsed, though he was able to finish the concert conducting from a chair. Terminally ill with cancer, Maestro de Burgos announced his retirement a week prior to his demise. His recorded legacy is quite large, encompassing the entire de Falla canon along with acclaimed preservations of Mozart's "Requiem," Bizet's "Carmen," Mendelssohn's "Elijah," and his one-time teacher Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana."