SIR Edward Elgar was well travelled through his work as a composer.

One of the more intriguing places he visited was Manaus, Brazil, in 1923 - located on the Negro River near its confluence with the Amazon and about 1,000 miles from the coast.

Today Manaus is an industrial town on the very edge of the rain forest of some 2 million people and it has many large parks with forest preservation areas. It is the largest urban forest in the world and located within it is the Federal University of the Amazon, which was founded in January 1909 and is the oldest university of its kind in Brazil.

Elgar went for its music because in 1896 the Teatro Amazonas - the Theatre of the Amazon - was built on the success of rubber plantations.

In his day, the building - bursting with Italian frescoes and crystal chandeliers - would have staged concerts of the classical compositions of that time, perhaps even music by Elgar himself.

In modern times every October the world's largest samba festival is arranged and staged there.

Samba-ised Elgar could lead to some interesting cultural exchanges between that remote rain forest based 100 year-old Brazilian university and the two-year-old chartered University of Worcester on the edge of industrialised Black Country.