The conductor Maximiano Valdés has been closely involved with the musical life of Spain. He served as Principal Conductor of the Euskadi Symphony Orchestra, and for three seasons as Principal Guest Conductor of the Spanish National Orchestra. On various occasions he has conducted at the Liceu in Barcelona as well as the Orchestra of the City of Barcelona, and has also given concerts with the Radio Television Orchestra and the symphony orchestras of Bilbao, Málaga, and Seville, among others. Since July 1994 he has been Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the Symphony Orchestra of the Principality of Asturias. Born in Santiago, Chile, of Asturian ancestry, he studied at the National Conservatory and subsequently at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. In Italy he studied composition with Goffredo Petrassi, as well as piano and violin, subsequently studying conducting with Franco Ferrara in Rome and in Venice. In 1976 he was appointed Assistant Conductor at La Fenice in Venice and the following year was invited to Tanglewood, where he worked with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa. He began his professional career in 1982, after winning important international prizes in the Vittorio Gui Competition in Florence and the Nikolay Malko Competition in Copenhagen, and has gone on to engagements throughout Europe and America, the latter including a period of ten years as Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, and a series of guest engagements in leading concert halls and opera houses, in collaboration with artists and

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