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.

Estonian conductor and Grammy Award winner Paavo Järvi has been Artistic Director of the Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen since 2004. One of the many highlights of this collaboration was the Beethoven cycle, acclaimed worldwide by audiences and critics alike, for which Järvi received numerous awards including the ›Echo Klassik Conductor of the Year‹ award and the prestigious annual ›German Record Critics‹’ award. Their Beethoven project was followed by an intensive exploration of the symphonic works of Schumann and Brahms; both cycles also received numerous awards. From autumn 2021, the focus was on Joseph Haydn’s twelve London symphonies, and since 2024, an intensive exploration of Franz Schubert’s symphonies.

Järvi has been Music Director of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich since the start of the 2019/20 season. He is also the founder and Artistic Director of the Estonian Festival Orchestra and the Pärnu Music Festival. From the 2028/29 season, Järvi will take up the post of Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor to the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He also regularly appears as a guest conductor 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, he was named ›Artist of the Year‹ by both the British magazine Gramophone and the French magazine Diapason. This was followed in 2019 by the Opus Klassik award for ›Conductor of the Year‹. Other awards 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 2015, Paavo Järvi also received the Sibelius Medal in recognition of his work in bringing this Finnish composer’s music to a wider audience, and in 2012 he received the Hindemith Prize for Art and Humanity. As a committed supporter of Estonian culture, Paavo Järvi was awarded the Order of the White Star by the President of Estonia in 2013.