María Dueñas at the 75th Edition of the Festival Internacional Santander

During a rainy and stormy afternoon, as the silver waves merged with a faded, grey sky, an eager audience sat waiting for the lights and coziness of the theatre to warm damp bones and soggy clothes. As if heeding our desires, those rays of sun would come from the hands of young violinist María Dueñas, whose luminous presence and command of the instrument left us bowed down with awe and perplexity.

The professional trajectory of Spanish violinist María Dueñas is certainly astounding. Now twenty-three years old, and a Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2022, the brilliant future of this Andalusian musician is guarded by her very passion and sensitivity. The Royal Swedish Orchestra, one of the oldest orchestras in the world, was led by music director and Royal Court Kapellmeister Alan Gilbert.

The Royal Swedish Orchestra began the evening by performing Mozart’s ‘Overture’ to The Magic Flute, a charming opener full of wittiness, as a sort of warm-up exercise for which Gilbert needed no score. After Dueñas’s performance, they played the Serenade in F major by Wilhelm Stenhammar, and Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture. While Stenhammar’s Serenade offered moments of quiet beauty, their Wagner, on the other hand, lacked the subtle dynamics that make the Pilgrim’s Hymn, or the chromatic and poignant leitmotif that follows, one of the most wonderful overtures. The tempo seemed too fast, and thus unable to enrich the harmonies.

Max Bruch – Violin Concerto no. 1 in G minor, op. 26

The Spanish soul should dwell in pride and celebration, for an artist like Dueñas delivers a measured passion only reserved for consecrated musicians. Bruch’s first movement of his violin concerto is an exquisite journey through the heights of Romanticism, to which Dueñas responded with an initial delicacy and yet powerful depth of tone.

From the first bar up to the last of that first phrase, a doleful scale in the home key of G minor, we were immediately spellbound by the magic of her violin. A highlight of Dueñas’s style of playing is the bewitching voice she reaps from the violin. She creates a gripping expectation between the bow and the strings, as if a willing voice, still non-existent, called in utter longing to be freed from such a miraculous tension. Once the voice is released, in divine ascension to the very zenith, Dueñas naturally guides its presence until they become one.

Dueñas takes her time, but without lagging or overdoing any expression. What was mesmerising was the direction she took with every phrase, ranging from soft pianissimos to vigorous fortes, in a vehement focalisation on every single note. For no tone was left bereft of meaning or emotional purpose. Whether Bruch professed rage, sorrow, or sealed melancholy, Dueñas adjusted with an easiness of temper that was hard to ignore. All emotional mountains were climbed and descended at such a thrilling speed, with such fluency of the heart, that it made us marvel at her extraordinary musical maturity.

For the second movement, Dueñas deviated from previous interpretations of this famous second part. But she did it with such conviction in her intonation, in her pauses and breathing, that it sounded completely new. There were unexpected declamations, maintaining a rounded gravitas with reliable force. And finally, the third movement exploded in an array of spirited chords and quavers that Dueñas mastered with binding fortitude. Not a hint of weariness or distraction; every phrase kept running with aplomb. In movements like this, when it might be tempting to speed up the tempo, Dueñas maintained the excitement without surrendering to those impulses, making it even more electrifying.

Delighted by her virtuosic playing, the audience was gifted with two pieces, the Valse triste by Franz von Vecsey, and Applemania by Aleksey Igudesman. Dueñas has proved once again the reasons behind her success. It has been an unforgettable experience to witness how mightiness, tenderness, and fury are all wrapped in the hands of such a promising artist.