María Dueñas

Born in Granada in 2002, Maria Dueñas fell in love with classical music via the recordings her parents played constantly at home and the concerts she attended in her native city. She started playing violin at six and enrolled at Granada's Conservatory a year later. In 2014 she was awarded a scholarship to study abroad by Juventudes Musicales Madrid and moved to Dresden to study at the Carl Maria von Weber College of Music. There she was soon spotted by violinist Wolfgang Hentrich and conductor Marek Janowski, at whose invitation she would later make her debut as soloist with the San Francisco Symphony. In 2016, she and her family moved again, this time to Austria to enable her to study with the renowned violin teacher Boris Kuschnir, on the recommendation of her mentor Vladimir Spivakov, at the private Music and Arts University of Vienna and the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz. Her competition victories began with the 2017 Zhuhai International Mozart Competition and 2018 Vladimir Spivakov International Violin Competition. In addition to her success in the Menuhin Violin Competition, 2021 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 2021-23. She signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon in September 2022 and will open her DG discography with Beethoven's Violin Concerto. Recorded in Vienna with the Wiener Symphoniker and Manfred Honeck and featuring the violinist’s own cadenzas, her debut album will be released in May 2023. A multi-faceted musician, Dueñas became fond of composing after she started writing cadenzas for Mozart's violin concertos. A solo piano piece, Farewell, was awarded a prize in the 2016 “Von fremden Ländern und Menschen” Competition for Young Composers. Recorded by Evgeny Sinaiski, it was transformed into a music video filmed during the pandemic. A dedicated chamber musician, she has performed with baritone Matthias Goerne and pianist Itamar Golan, among other artists. She has also premiered several works written for and dedicated to her by the late Catalan composer Jordi Cervelló, including the Milstein Caprice. Dueñas plays the Nicolò Gagliano violin of 17?4, kindly loaned by the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben, and the Guarneri del Gesù "Muntz" of 1736, on generous loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.