María Dueñas

Her meteoric rise led to an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. Her 2023 debut album, Beethoven and Beyond, showcased her remarkable interpretation of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto featuring her own cadenzas. This recording, with the Vienna Symphony under Manfred Honeck, earned her the prestigious Opus Klassik award as Young Artist of the Year in 2024, adding to an extraordinary array of prizes at competitions worldwide. Her second album, an ambitious project centered around Paganini’s 24 Caprices earned her both Young Artist of the Year and Instrumentalist of the Year at the 2025 Gramophone Classical Music Awards.

María Dueñas has performed with leading orchestras around the world under conductors such as Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Manfred Honeck, Herbert Blomstedt, Daniel Harding, Andris Nelsons, Paavo Järvi and Christian Thielemann. Her close artistic partnership with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel has yielded several notable achievements, including the world premiere of Gabriela Ortiz’s Grammy award-winning violin concerto, Altar de Cuerda.

Her creative pursuits extend beyond performance, with compositions of her own and innovative projects such as the film Measures for a Funeral, featuring the rediscovery of Halvorsen’s violin concerto.

Highlights of the 2025-2026 season include her debuts with the Vienna Philharmonic under Karina Canellakis at the Salzburg Mozart Week, and the New York Philharmonic under her long-standing artistic partner Manfred Honeck, concerts on the occasion of Zubin Mehta’s 90th birthday together with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, as well as a tour through Australia and New Zealand.

As a stipendiary of the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben, María Dueñas plays the Giambattista Guadagnini violin of 1779, as well as the Antonio Stradivarius “Michelangelo” (1718), on generous loan from the Karolina Blaberg Foundation.