Osvaldo Nicolás Ferraro de los Rios (7 September 1934 – 28 March 1977) better known as Waldo de los Rios was an Argentine composer, conductor and arranger.

He was born in Buenos Aires into a musical family. His father worked as a musician and his mother was a well known folk singer. He studied composition and arranging at the National Conservatory of Music under Alberto Ginastera and Teodoro Fuchs.

He was inspired by an eclectic range of music and formed a musical group called “The Waldos” which crossed folk music with electronic sounds. De Los Rios later turned to work in cinema and film sound tracks where his compositions were heard in the 1967 film Savage Pampas. For this work he received a prestigious award from the Argentine Academy of Cinematography Arts and Sciences.

In The UK he is best remembered for his ability to transform western classical music into pop music. His 1971 arrangement of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, recorded with the Manuel de Falla orchestra, reached the top spot in the Dutch charts and scored a top 10 hit in several other European countries including The UK. In 1970, prior to this success, Waldo de los Ríos had already climbed the charts around Europe and America with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ode To Joy, which he arranged and conducted for Miguel Ríos “Song of Joy”.

His record Mozart in the Seventies rearranged famous Mozart pieces in a contemporary style, with a large percussion section. Several tracks from it were used as theme tunes to BBC programmes of that era, including his reworking of Mozart’s A Musical Joke which was used as the theme to the BBC’s coverage of the Horse of the Year Show. His version of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, used for many years as the theme to the Radio 4 quiz show Brain of Britain, was the subject of frequent complaints from classical music fans (with whom the show was popular) and presenter Robert Robinson described it on air as “Mozart plus sacrilege”.

He released an album, Symphonies for the Seventies, in 1971 which included Mozart’s Symphony no. 40 and other major classical compositions including Dvořák’s New World symphony. Later that year he arranged and conducted the Spanish entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, “En un mundo nuevo” performed by Karina. The song landed a respectable second position and hit the charts in several European countries. As an aside here is a clip of the performance with Waldo De Los Rios conducting the orchestra

He released more albums following the success of Symphonies for the Seventies, two of which caught my eye/ear; Symphonies for The Seventies II and Concertos for The Seventies were released in 1974 and 1976 respectively. Here at Chez Waye this trilogy of popular music albums still get played to this day.

Waldo De Los Rios was married to actress turned journalist/author Isabel Pisano who was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1944. Pisano later documented part of his life in her autobiography El Amado Fantasma in 2002.

Sadly he became the victim of acute depression while working on “Don Juan Tenorio”, and committed suicide in Madrid in 1977.

A couple of facts.

De Los Rios’ version of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony No. 8 was used extensively in the series The Smurfs as the background music for Gargamel, the series’ lead villain.

And:

On 10 March 2010, The Rush Limbaugh Show played an AM radio optimised mix of De Los Ríos’s version of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor. The exposure propelled the song and the CD’s popularity from No. 136,705 to No. 1 on The Amazon store’s rankings.

Here are a few tracks released by Waldo De Los Rios. I hope you enjoy them.

Symphonies for The 70s:-

Concertos for The 70s:-