The violinist María Dueñas enchants her audience with the breathtaking variety of colours she elicits from her instrument, her technical ability, her artistic maturity and her bold interpretations. She studies with the world-renowned violin teacher Boris Kuschnir at the College of Music and Performing Arts in her adopted home of Vienna. Born in Granada in 2002, she began taking lessons at the conservatory in her home town at the age of seven. A scholarship abroad took her to Dresden for two years in 2014, where she attracted the attention of conductor Marek Janowski, at whose invitation she later made her debut as soloist with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

After a series of first prizes at prestigious international competitions, María Dueñas caused a sensation in 2021, particularly at the Menuhin Violin Competition, where she won both first prize and the audience prize. This versatile musician, who is also a passionate composer, is now in worldwide demand and has already performed with many major orchestras. She has worked closely with conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel, Yannick Nézèt-Séguin and Manfred Honeck. As an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, she released her first album – Beethoven and Beyond – with Manfred Honeck and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in May 2023. The centrepiece of the recording is the Beethoven Violin Concerto with her own cadenzas.

María Dueñas plays the 17?4 Nicolò Gagliano violin, on loan from the German Foundation for Musical Life, and the 1710 Stradivarius ›Camposelice‹, on loan to her from the Nippon Music Foundation.

Estonian conductor and Grammy Award winner Paavo Järvi has been Artistic Director of The Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen, his only German orchestra, since 2004. One highlight of the collaboration were the celebrated concerts of the Beethoven cycle, which received critical acclaim worldwide. Järvi received numerous awards for the recordings, including the ›Echo Klassik‹ as ›Conductor of the Year‹ and the prestigious ›Annual Prize of the German Record Critics‹.

Following the Beethoven project, he and the orchestra tackled the symphonic works of Schumann and Brahms, which received similarly enthusiastic reviews. Paavo Järvi is also Principal Conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Artistic Advisor to the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and the Järvi Summer Festival in Pärnu, Estonia, and since 2019/20 Artistic Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. He regularly makes appearances as guest conductor with orchestras such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras, the Staatskappelle Dresden and the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago and the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra. In 2015, he was named ›Artist of the Year‹ by the renowned British magazine Gramophone and the French magazine Diapason. In 2019, he received the ›Opus Klassik‹ as ›Conductor of the Year‹.