Biography
“… if you could capture charisma on a recording, then this young Spanish violinist (and composer) is in a league of her own…”
Gramophone, on Dueñas’s Paganini album, winner of the magazine’s 2025 Instrumental Award
Award-winning Spanish violinist María Dueñas beguiles audiences with the breathtaking array of colours she draws from her instrument. The technical prowess, artistic maturity and bold interpretations that captivated competition juries and launched her meteoric career today inspire rave reviews and invitations to appear at the world’s most prestigious venues. Summing her up in a profile piece last year, the New York Times wrote, “[Dueñas] has emerged as something particularly special: a strong-willed young artist with something to say, and the skill to say it brilliantly”.
Now established as a global artist, Dueñas works regularly with such leading ensembles as the Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Bamberger Symphoniker, Staatskapelle Berlin, Staatskapelle Dresden, Oslo Philharmonic, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Orchestre de Paris, among many others. The long list of eminent conductors with whom she has collaborated, meanwhile, includes such stellar names as Marin Alsop, Herbert Blomstedt, Gustavo Dudamel, Christoph Eschenbach, Daniel Harding, Paavo Järvi, Cristian Măcelaru, Kent Nagano, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Sir Antonio Pappano, Christian Thielemann and Santtu-Matias Rouvali. A dedicated chamber musician, she has also performed with artists including baritone Matthias Goerne, pianist Itamar Golan, violinist Renaud Capuçon and guitarist Raphaël Feuillâtre.
María signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon in September 2022 and opened her DG discography with the Beethoven Violin Concerto, for which she composed her own cadenzas. Entitled Beethoven and Beyond, her debut album also included 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.
Recorded live at the Vienna Musikverein with the Wiener Symphoniker and Manfred Honeck, Beethoven and Beyond was released to widespread acclaim in May 2023 (“What a player, and what a way to launch a recording career” – Gramophone). The album won Dueñas a 2024 OPUS KLASSIK Young Talent of the Year award. She performed live at the gala awards ceremony, playing Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No. 1 with fellow DG artist Bruce Liu, and was also presented with the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag’s readers’ prize for Newcomer of the Year.
In July 2024, she released her interpretation of Julian Lawrence Gargiulo’s Sonata No. 4 for violin and piano, “From the Window”, showcasing her commitment to contemporary music.
Her second album saw her tackle an icon of the repertoire: Paganini’s 24 Caprices. She coupled these with a selection of Paganini-inspired works by composers ranging from Berlioz to Gabriela Ortiz. Dueñas is joined in chamber pieces by Boris Kuschnir, Itamar Golan, Alexander Malofeev and Raphaël Feuillâtre, and in orchestral caprices by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Mihhail Gerts.
The album was released in all formats in February 2025, it too to enthusiastic reviews (“I’d be hard-pushed to name another modern recording offering anything close to the multicoloured lyrical imagination produced by this 22-year-old” – Gramophone). It went on to win the Instrumental category at the 2025 Gramophone Awards, at which María was also named Young Artist of the Year.
Highlights of recent seasons include her world premiere performance of Ortiz’s De Cuerda y Madera at the :alpenarte Festival in Schwarzenberg; her solo recital debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall; the world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival of Sofia Bohdanowicz’s Measures for a Funeral, in which María plays the role of young violinist Elisa, performing Johan Halvorsen’s long-lost Violin Concerto with the Orchestre Métropolitain and Yannick Nézet-Séguin; her debuts with the Staatskapelle Dresden under Andrés Orozco-Estrada and Staatskapelle Berlin under Christian Thielemann; a concert at the Tanglewood Festival with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Andris Nelsons; a performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto as part of the Nobel Prize Concert 2025; and the German premiere of Ortiz’s Altar de cuerda concerto (of which, as with De Cuerda y Madera, she is the dedicatee).
Forthcoming highlights of the 2025–26 season include her debut with the Wiener Philharmoniker, under Karina Canellakis, at the Salzburg Mozartwoche (24 January 2026); her debut with the New York Philharmonic, under Manfred Honeck, in the Beethoven Violin Concerto at Lincoln Center (29 January, further performances 30 January−1 February); 90th-birthday tributes to Zubin Mehta with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Madrid and Barcelona (14/16 February); and the Beethoven Concerto and Bruch’s Concerto No. 1 on tour in Australia and New Zealand (12–28 March).
Born in Granada in 2002, María 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. In 2016, she and her family moved again, this time to Austria, on the recommendation of her mentor Vladimir Spivakov, to enable her to study at the Music and Arts University of Vienna and the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz.
A multi-faceted musician, Dueñas developed a love 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. She has also written Homage 1770, a solo violin piece inspired by her debut album and Beethoven’s legacy, and cadenzas for most of the violin concerto repertoire.
Her performance competition victories began with the 2017 Zhuhai International Mozart Competition and 2018 Vladimir Spivakov International Violin Competition. 2021 proved to be the real breakthrough year: not only was she awarded the first prize and audience prize at that year’s (livestreamed) Menuhin Violin Competition, she also won 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 went on to be named a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist 2021–23, and in 2023 won a Princesa de Girona Prize, the jury hailing her as an exceptional role model for young people, thanks to “her huge talent, her discipline, and her capacity for hard work”.
María Dueñas plays the Nicolò Gagliano violin of 17?4, kindly loaned by the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.
12/2025