Spanish National Orchestra


The Orquesta Nacional de España is a symphonic orchestra that is based in Madrid, Spain.

History

Although the orchestra originated as of 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, it was legally founded in 1940, by the merging of Pérez Casas' Filarmónica and the Orquesta Sinfónica of Enrique Fernández Arbós.
The first official concert of the newly founded orchestra was in March 1941 at the Teatro María Guerrero in Madrid conducted by eminent Portuguese conductor Pedro de Freitas Branco. The principal conductors of these first years of the orchestra were Ernesto Halffter, José María Franco, Enrique Jordá, Eduard Toldrà and Jesús Arámbarri, until the designation of the first principal conductor of the orchestra, Bartolomé Pérez Casas. After his death the new principal conductor was Ataúlfo Argenta, who was in the orchestra from 1945 as the keyboard instruments player.

Principal conductors