María Dueñas (violinist) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids María Dueñas Fernández
María Dueñas, 2017
Background information
Born	(2002-12-04) 4 December 2002 (age 22) Granada, Spain
Genres	Classical
Occupation(s)	Musician • Composer
Instruments	Violin
Years active	2017-present
Labels	Deutsche Grammophon

María Dueñas Fernández (born 4 December 2002), is a Spanish violinist and composer. In 2021 she won the first prize in the Yehudi Menuhin Competition, in the Senior Division. She is considered the Spanish violinist with the greatest international profile, and one of the most promising musicians of her generation. In 2022 she signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon.

Early life and education

María Dueñas Fernández was born in 2002 in Granada, Spain, in a family in which there are no professional musicians, but who encouraged her musical training, as she attended concerts from an early age.

She enrolled at the Ángel Barrios Conservatory in her native Granada when she was seven. At the age of 11, she won a scholarship from the Juventudes Musicales de Madrid, allowing her to study at the Carl Maria von Weber College of Music in Dresden. On the recommendation of violinist and conductor Vladimir Spivakov, she then moved to Vienna to study with Boris Kuschnir, and enrolled at the University of Music and Dramatic Art in Vienna and at the University of Graz.

Musical career

Dueñas has been a soloist with European and American orchestras, such as the San Francisco Symphony, the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Spanish National Orchestra. In September 2019, Dueñas was designated as the New Artist of the Month by the magazine Musical America, which is the oldest American magazine on classical music.

She won the 1st prize at the 2021 Getting to Carnegie Hall competition, for which each participant performed the world premiere of one movement of Julian Gargiulo’s new sonata for violin and piano. In 2021, at the age of 18, Dueñas won the 1st prize in the Senior Division at the Menuhin Competition, and she won the Audience Prize as well. For the final round of the competition, Dueñas played Witold Lutosławski's Subito, Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, and Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole in D minor. The award includes $20,000 and a 2-year loan of a golden period Stradivarius violin. In 2023 she won the Luitpold Prize of the festival Kissinger Sommer.

Other competitions she has competed in include the 1st Leonid Kogan International Competition for Young Violinists (1st Prize, 3rd Category) and the 2nd Zhuhai International Mozart Competition for Young Musicians (1st Prize, Violin Group B) in 2017, the 4th Yankelevitch International Violin Competition (1st Prize, Senior Division) and the 2nd Vladimir Spivakov International Violin Competition (1st Prize) in 2018, the Montreal International Musical Competition Violin Edition in 2019, and the 2nd Viktor Tretyakov International Violin Competition (Grand Prize) in 2021.

Composing career

Dueñas is also a composer and the founder of the Hamamelis Quartett. She composed the piece “Farewell” when she was 13, which was awarded the Robert Schumann International Piano Competition award in 2016. Her piece was later produced as a music video.[1]

Discography

Albums

* Versions of Beethoven's Violin Concerto from Beethoven and Beyond were released as an additional 5 albums from May through July 2023 with each of them having First Movement Cadenzas written by Louis Spohr (12 May 2023), Eugène Ysaÿe (2 June 2023), Camille Saint-Saëns (16 June 2023), Henryk Wieniawski (30 June 2023), and Fritz Kreisler (14 July 2023). The Second and Third Movement Cadenzas are written by María in these 5 albums.

Singles and EPs

Sources

See also

In Spanish: María Dueñas (violinista) para niños