María Dueñas Presents Halvorsen’s Violin Concerto together with the Orchestre Métropolitain and Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Dueñas’s acclaimed rendition of Halvorsen’s forgotten masterpiece in
Sofia Bohdanowicz’s film will now reach an even wider global audience
She is joined in the Violin Concerto and Halvorsen’s Chant de la “Veslemøy”
by the Orchestre Métropolitain and Yannick Nézet-Séguin – out on 16 October 2026
The two works also appear on the movie’s soundtrack album,
whose original score was composed by Olivier Alary – out on 4 December
“María Dueñas quickly won over her audience with
the lyricism of her initial cadenza, which was absolutely sublime”
Bachtrack, on the artists’ performance of Halvorsen’s Concerto in Montreal, November 2023
Deutsche Grammophon is delighted to announce the release of a pair of companion digital albums from María Dueñas. Both are being issued in connection with Measures for a Funeral, the 2024 film in which the violinist made her acting debut. The first album presents her recordings of two works by Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen (1864–1935), who was himself a virtuoso violinist. Together with the Orchestre Métropolitain and its Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Dueñas performs Halvorsen’s long-lost Violin Concerto and Chant de la “Veslemøy”, an excerpt from his Suite Mosaïque. The second album is the original soundtrack to Sofia Bohdanowicz’s film, featuring the two Halvorsen works alongside new music written and performed by Montreal-based French composer Olivier Alary.
Captured live for the film at Montreal’s Maison symphonique in collaboration with DG, the standalone recordings of Halvorsen’s Violin Concerto and Chant de la “Veslemøy” (“Song of the Young Maiden”) will be released on 16 October 2026. Measures for a Funeral – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack will follow on 4 December.
An introspective, thought-provoking film about grief and memory, Measures for a Funeral premiered in the Centrepiece programme at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the Grand Prix at Montreal’s Festival du nouveau cinéma. It has now screened at more than 30 festivals internationally and is soon to receive a US theatrical release through acclaimed independent distributor Factory 25. The Globe and Mail hailed it as “a symphony of obsession”, while The Guardian, in a four-star review, said watching it felt like “stepping into an Alfred Hitchcock dream”.
The film’s central figure, Audrey (Deragh Campbell), is a young musicologist researching the (real-life) pioneering Canadian violinist Kathleen Parlow (1890–1963). Director Bohdanowicz, whose own grandfather – violinist Andrew Benac – was taught by Parlow, was also inspired by the story of Halvorsen’s Violin Concerto, Op. 28. Dedicated to and premiered by Parlow in 1909, it met with mixed reviews and its composer ordered all copies to be destroyed. Having acquired a mythical status as a lost masterpiece, the work suddenly resurfaced a decade ago, when librarians Houman Behzadi and James Mason found it at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music Library as part of a large-scale project to digitise Parlow’s archive.
Bohdanowicz’s movie culminates in a performance of the concerto by young violinist Elisa, played with great sensitivity by Dueñas. “When we presented the script to María, she immediately identified with it”, says the film-maker. “I really do feel like she’s sort of a reincarnation of Kathleen Parlow. She is a remarkably skilled musician.”
Dueñas gives a dazzling performance of the concerto, whose use of Norwegian folk idioms and Hardanger fiddle effects adds to its many attractions. She masters its full array of technical demands, intensifying the contrast between its virtuosic episodes and its gently lyrical moments.
Halvorsen’s songlike vein is heard again in Chant de la “Veslemøy”, an exquisite miniature originally for violin and piano but arranged by the composer for Parlow to perform with strings while she was in Norway in 1909. Bachtrack’s critic noted how at the Montreal concert Dueñas and her fellow musicians created “a transcendent experience”, with Nézet-Séguin fostering “an atmosphere in which all the performers were empowered to reach their full expressive potential”.
“It was an honour to help recover Johan Halvorsen’s magnificent Violin Concerto, Op. 28,” says Dueñas, “and to give renewed visibility to Kathleen Parlow, the extraordinary Canadian virtuoso for whom the work was written. Parlow was a celebrated violinist of the early twentieth century, her career unfolding in the same remarkable era as that of Jascha Heifetz, and yet her name has gradually faded from musical memory. Through Measures for a Funeral, I felt privileged not only to convey her artistic legacy, but also to bring her voice, through Halvorsen’s music, to a new generation of listeners. To encounter this long-lost masterpiece and allow it to live again in performance in Canada under the great Canadian maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin was a deeply moving experience: a tribute to Parlow’s artistry, to Halvorsen’s imagination, and to the enduring power of music to restore forgotten lives to our collective memory.”
Acclaimed soundtrack composer Olivier Alary has written a powerful, at times ominous original score for Measures for a Funeral. His music, featuring contributions from violists Victor de Coninck and Pemi Paull, complements the Romantic orchestral pieces and expresses Audrey’s inner world. It follows her as she immerses herself in Parlow’s life and work – an escape from the unresolved tensions in her relationship with her dying mother.
This season, María Dueñas makes her South American debut with concerts in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, before appearing in Mexico (4–10 October; Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor). Further highlights include a reunion with the Staatskapelle Berlin and Christian Thielemann in Berlin (12/13 January 2027; Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in D minor) and performances of the Barber Violin Concerto with the Wiener Symphoniker and Petr Popelka in Austria and the Canary Islands (15‑24 January). She also appears with the Bamberger Symphoniker under Jakub Hrůša (Bamberg, 5/6 February, and Hamburg, 8 March; Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1), returns to Montreal to rejoin Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Orchestre Métropolitain (21–23 April; Saint-Saëns’s Violin Concerto No. 3), and performs the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Santtu-Matias Rouvali (Munich, 4 May, and London, 6 May). Full touring details here.
