PROFILE

For Jader Bignamini biography, see page 6.

Spanish violinist María Dueñas beguiles audiences with the breathtaking array of colors she draws from her instrument. Her technical prowess, artistic maturity, and bold interpretations have inspired rave reviews, captivated competition juries, and secured invitations to appear with many of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors.

Dueñas studies with world-renowned violin teacher Boris Kuschnir at the Music and Arts University of Vienna. Born in Granada in 2002, she was accepted at the Conservatory in her hometown at the age of seven. In 2014, she won a scholarship to study abroad and went to Dresden, where she was soon spotted by conductor Marek Janowski, at whose invitation she would later make her debut as soloist with the San Francisco Symphony. Two years later, she and her family moved to Austria, following the recommendation of her mentor Vladimir Spivakov. A multi-faceted musician, she is also fond of composing and wrote her own cadenzas for the violin concertos of Mozart and Beethoven.

Following an array of first prizes at various prestigious international competitions, Dueñas created a stir at the 2021 Menuhin Violin Competition, at which she won not only the first prize and audience prize, but also a global online following. 2021 also saw her win first prize at the Getting to Carnegie Competition, the Grand Prize at the Viktor Tretyakov International Violin Competition, and the career advancement prize at the Rheingau Music Festival. She was also named as a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist 202123. In April 2023, she was awarded the prestigious Premio Princesa de Girona de las Artes y las Letras in her native Spain.

Since then, she has been in high demand worldwide and has performed with many major orchestras including the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Berlin, Dresdner

Philharmonie, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and NHK Symphony Orchestra, under conductors such as Marek Janowski, Manfred Honeck, Vladimir Spivakov, Vassily Sinaisky, Gustavo Gimeno, and Michael Sanderling. In summer 2021, she made her debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel at the Hollywood Bowl and joined them again in May 2022 to give the world premiere of Gabriela Ortiz’s violin concerto Altar de cuerda, which she has since also performed in Boston and at Carnegie Hall in New York.

Dueñas signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon in September 2022. Her first album, Beethoven and Beyond, with the Wiener Symphoniker and Manfred Honeck, was released in May 2023, featuring the Beethoven Violin Concerto with her own cadenzas. It also includes five showpieces for violin and orchestra by Kreisler, Saint-Saëns, Spohr, Wieniawski, and Ysaÿe, and a companion disc presenting cadenzas written by these same composers for the first movement of the Beethoven.

She plays on the Nicolò Gagliano violin, c. 17?4, kindly loaned from Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben, and on the Stradivari “Camposelice” of 1710, on generous loan from Nippon Music Foundation.