Get to know Maria Dueñas

How did you get your start in music?

My start in music was really natural. My parents are not musicians, but they loved classical music. I remember always listening to music at home or when I went to school in the car. I also went to some concerts with my parents in my hometown, Granada. That’s when I saw the violin for the first time on stage, and I knew that was what I wanted to play.

Besides being a musician, you are also studying at university. What do you do besides travelling the world?

Besides traveling and playing concerts, I am still at university studying music in Vienna. I always like to say I have a double life. On the one hand, traveling – but also going to class and meeting up with friends. I like to have this balance where I also have time to rest.

Tell us about the piece you are going to be performing?

It is one of my favourite concertos because it is really different from other concertos. It starts with the violin – normally in every violin concerto there is a very long introduction by the orchestra. But for this, you have to be present from the very first seconds of the piece.

I really love how the orchestra communicates with the soloist almost throughout the whole concerto. I feel when whenever I play it, I see all these images from Finland in my head – I actually did play this concerto in Lahti. I remember seeing all the snow and the very typical Finnish natural environment. I’m very inspired by that.

You have performed this concerto quite a bit – how did you first meet and study the piece?

I remember listening to recordings of Oistrakh and of Heifetz growing up. When I first listened to the Sibelius concerto, I just thought – wow, that’s a really different start for a concerto. It starts with the violin – normally in every violin concerto there is a very long introduction by the orchestra. But for this, you have to be present from the very first seconds of the piece.

I was mesmerized by the way the violin was in such a foggy place at the beginning and I was really excited to see how it would evolve. When I play the concerto there are so many moods and characters coming together. There is the Nordic landscape it evokes and a feeling of hope. When I performed this concerto in Lahti some years ago with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Daniel Harding, there was a beautiful river outside the concert hall, surrounded by fog, but also the peeking sun. That, for me, is a very good representation of the concerto, because there’s always light at the end. And you can see that in the finale, which is joyful and danceable.

What do you appreciate about Sibelius within the context of this concerto?

I think Sibelius’s concerto is so different because he was a violinist himself. It feels like he wrote this concerto for himself. And as I hear, he was quite a good violinist, but apparently not quite good enough for his own concerto, which is technically much more difficult than what he would have been able to perform. But I think this fact explains why the concerto is so well written for the violin.

Of course, there are a lot of technical challenges, but there is also this throughline in which you can see lots of symmetry. From the beginning until the end, it plays like a long story to me.

Do you ever get nervous or is the stage your home?

I wouldn’t say I get nervous because I think I have learned to appreciate the nerves. I think when you’re nervous that means that something very important is about to happen. So it’s more of a feeling of excitement in my case. I am happy when this happens because that means that I’m about to do something that I don’t do every day.

Maria Dueñas joins us on Sunday 3 November at the Royal Festival Hall for Sibelius’s Violin Concerto.