The Spanish violinist María Dueñas captivates her audience with her extraordinary range of timbres, her technical skill and her artistic maturity.

Her meteoric rise led to an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. After her debut album Beethoven and Beyond won an Opus Klassik award, she received two Gramophone Classical Music Awards in 2025 for her second album – an ambitious project centred on Paganini’s legendary 24 Caprices.

María Dueñas has already collaborated with the world’s leading orchestras, including the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Münchner Philharmoniker, the Bamberger Symphoniker, the Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen, Pittsburgh Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Accademia di Santa Cecilia und the Orchestre de Paris. In doing so, she has performed with a host of highly esteemed conductors such as Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Herbert Blomstedt, Christian Thielemann, Marin Alsop, Christoph Eschenbach, Manfred Honeck, Marek Janowski, Daniel Harding, Andris Nelsons, Alan Gilbert, Paavo Järvi, Kent Nagano, Andrés Orozco-Estrada and Santtu-Matias Rouvali.

Highlights of the 2025/2026 season included her debuts with Karina Canellakis and the Wiener Philharmoniker at the Salzburg Mozart Week and with Manfred Honeck and the New York Philharmonic, concerts to mark Zubin Mehta’s 90th birthday with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and a tour of Australia and New Zealand.

María Dueñas plays a 1779 Giambattista Guadagnini violin on loan from the Deutsche Stifung Musikleben as well as the 1718 ›Michelangelo‹ Stradivarius on generous loan from the Karolina Blaberg Stiftung.

The Estonian conductor and Grammy Award winner Paavo Järvi has served as Artistic Director of the Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen since 2004. One of the many highlights of this long standing collaboration was the widely acclaimed Beethoven cycle, whose performances were celebrated by critics around the world and honoured with numerous awards, including the Echo Klassik for “Conductor of the Year.” The Beethoven project was followed by an intensive exploration of the symphonic works of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms; both cycles likewise received multiple distinctions. Since autumn 2021, the orchestra has turned its focus to Joseph Haydn’s twelve London Symphonies, followed in 2024 by an in depth engagement with the symphonies of Franz Schubert.

Since the 2019/20 season, Paavo Järvi has also served as Music Director of the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich. Starting with the 2028/29 season, Järvi will assume the position of Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He is the founder and Artistic Director of the Estonian Festival Orchestra and the Pärnu Music Festival, which he established in 2011. As a guest conductor, he regularly appears with leading orchestras such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 2015, Paavo Järvi was named Artist of the Year by both Gramophone magazine (UK) and Diapason (France). This was followed in 2019 by the Opus Klassik award for Conductor of the Year. Further honours include a Grammy Award for his recording of Sibelius’ Cantatas with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and the title Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, awarded by the French Ministry of Culture. In recognition of his commitment to promoting the music of Jean Sibelius, he received the Sibelius Medal in 2015, and in 2012 he was awarded the Hindemith Prize for Art and Humanity. For his dedication to Estonian culture, Paavo Järvi was awarded the Order of the White Star by the President of Estonia in 2013, and in 2024 he received the Bremen Senate Medal for Art and Science.