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Filipino conductor and violinist Oscar C Yatco was born in Tanuan, Batangas on 23 November 1931 into a family of music lovers. At fourteen he became the youngest member of the Manila Symphony Orchestra. He studied at the University of the Philippines, and also at Juilliard with Ivan Galamian and at Munich's State Music Academy with Wilhelm Stross.
He was the Manila Symphony Orchestra's first Filipino music director, leader of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra (1974-9) and a frequent violin soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Munich Philharmonic orchestras.
As well as conducting, leading and working as music consultant for various orchestras, he was also a music professor at the Hannover Hochschule.
He died in Hannover on 1 July 2014, aged eighty-two.