María Dueñas
About
Spanish violinist María Dueñas enchants her audiences with the breathtaking variety of colours she elicits from her instrument, with her technical skills, artistic maturity, and bold interpretations. Born in Granada in 2002, she started playing the violin at six and enrolled at her hometown's conservatory of music a year later. In 2014 a scholarship took her to Dresden for two years. Since 2016, she has been studying with the world-renowned violin teacher Boris Kuschnir at the University of Music and Performing Arts in her adopted hometown of Vienna.
After a series of first prizes at prestigious international competitions, María Dueñas is in demand worldwide, especially since her livestreamed victory at the Menuhin Violin Competition 2021, where she not only won first prize and the audience prize, but also a worldwide online fan base. She was also selected by BBC Radio 3 as a New Generation Artist 2021-23. In 2023, she was awarded the prestigious Premio Princesa de Girona de las Artes y las Letras in her native Spain.
She has already performed with many major orchestras such as Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Munich Philharmonic, Bamberg Symphony, Staatskapelle Berlin, Oslo Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra and NHK Symphony Orchestra, under leading conductors such Manfred Honeck, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Paavo Järvi, Daniel Harding and Herbert Blomstedt. She enjoys a close collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel.
Highlights of the 2024/2025 season include her return to the Philadelphia Orchestra with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Staatskapelle Berlin with Paavo Järvi, her debuts with the Staatskapelle Dresden under Andrés Orozco-Estrada, the Philharmonia Orchestra with both Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Marin Alsop, and the Cleveland Orchestra under Stéphane Denève, recitals with the pianist Alexander Malofeev, including concerts at Carnegie Hall and the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, a friendly reunion with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Manfred Honeck as well as engagements with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and Marek Janowski and the RAI National Symphony Orchestra Turin, again with Andrés Orozco-Estrada.
As an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, she released her first album Beethoven and Beyond with Manfred Honeck and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in 2023, for which she was honoured with the Opus Klassik 2024 in the category ‘Young Artist of the Year’. Her new album, “Caprices”, will be released in February 2025.
The versatile musician discovered her love of composing when she began writing cadenzas for Mozart's violin concertos. Her piece Farewell for solo piano won a prize at the youth composition competition ‘Von fremden Ländern und Menschen’ in 2016. It was recorded by pianist Evgeny Sinaiski and is also available as a music video. Her composition Homage 1770 for solo violin was also released by Deutsche Grammophon.
María Dueñas plays the Nicolò Gagliano violin of 1774, on loan by the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben, and the Stradivari "Camposelice" of 1710, loaned to her by the Nippon Music Foundation.