Spanish violinist Dueñas: 'The cadenza is when you face the composer alone'

First Korea performance at Seoul Arts Center on Friday

Collaborating with conductor Gustavo Gimeno

A conversation with Brahms across 148 years

"Music must be alive, and it must be able to speak to the audience. Otherwise, it is merely noise."

In an era when technically flawless perfectionism and polished, pretty sound increasingly dominate the concert stage, 24-year-old Gen Z violinist María Dueñas refuses to fall into what she calls the trap of sound. She is a bold virtuoso who insists on driving the full life force of music — raw when it needs to be, delicate when it must — straight into the hearts of her listeners.

Dueñas, who makes her Korean debut at Seoul Arts Center in Seocho-dong on Friday, said she finds it "enormously exciting to discover new places through music" and is "thrilled to be visiting Korea for the first time."

The Spanish violinist established herself early as a prodigy. She picked up the violin at five, swept the 2021 Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition, signed an exclusive contract with the storied Deutsche Grammophon label at 19, and went on to win a Grammy Award for an album of contemporary world-premiere recordings. She has also appeared as an actor in a film about the life and music of early 20th-century Canadian violinist Kathleen Parlow.

Her path to the violin was not a deliberate one. "I never had a clear idea that I had to become a violinist," she recalled. For the young girl, the instrument became a language — a channel through which she could touch the world.

"I was a very shy child. The violin naturally became a way for me to discover new things and express myself. I was always fascinated by great violinists — particularly by the fact that two players could perform the exact same notes and yet create completely different worlds."

From the moment she first held the violin, Dueñas has used the instrument to explore both music and herself. Alongside technique and virtuosity, what she pursues most deeply is the search for the many different sounds within her. "Technique is essential because it gives the performer freedom, but it is not the destination," she said. "The purpose of practice is to internalize technique so completely that on stage you no longer have to think about how to play — you can focus entirely on the music."

What she wants to create through the violin is "a rich palette of timbres and nuances." She hopes the instrument will "not stay in one beautiful sound but offer many different voices," and said she now spends more time thinking about "finding something genuine within my own individuality and within the work itself."

Her recently released album "Homage to Heifetz" is a tribute to Jascha Heifetz, whose playing has profoundly shaped her musical life. "I was captivated by his overwhelming technique, the clarity of his musical thinking, and the sense of clear intention," she said. "The album grew out of years of listening to his recordings and the musical experience I built from that." For the recording, she played some of his arrangements on the very Stradivarius he had used. Dueñas currently performs on a 1779 Giambattista Guadagnini and a 1718 Stradivarius known as the "Michelangelo."

Dueñas said she deliberately avoided practicing on that Stradivarius too much before the recording session. "I thought that if I made it completely my own, it might lose the history and unique identity the instrument carries," she said. "I wanted to let the instrument speak for itself. That moment will stay with me always."

"I dream of a day when someone hears one of my recordings and says, 'That's María Dueñas's sound!' I'm not sure I can describe my own sound in words. But when I listen to the great masters, I stop what I'm doing and lean in — because the music is speaking to me. It's a truly beautiful feeling."

For her Seoul performance, Dueñas will play Brahms's Violin Concerto in D major with the Luxembourg Philharmonic under conductor Gustavo Gimeno — a work that has drawn countless interpretations from the greatest performers. What draws her attention is "the process of change Brahms went through before completing the concerto." Brahms originally conceived the work in four movements and even wrote a scherzo, only to discard it. "Even the greatest masterpiece does not suddenly appear in finished form from the outset," she said. "It goes through a process of constant questioning, revision, and sometimes letting go."

It is precisely that journey of exploration that Dueñas wants audiences to hear. "Rather than listening to this concerto as a finished, unchanging masterpiece, I hope the audience will experience it as music that is still in constant dialogue with me," she said.

There is a moment in that 148-year conversation between Brahms and Dueñas where the young violinist adds her own voice: the cadenza. Following her cadenzas for concertos by Mozart and Beethoven, she has written her own for the Brahms as well. "Writing a cadenza is not about inserting something entirely separate from the concerto," she said. "The cadenza must flow naturally from the music of the work itself." For Dueñas, the cadenza is a singular moment.

"In a sense, it is the moment when you face the composer alone. There is true freedom in that space, and I always enjoy the opportunity to make it entirely my own."

Dueñas is, in fact, a composer as well as a performer. "Starting to compose fundamentally changed the way I look at music," she said. "When you write something yourself, you become far more acutely aware of every small choice — and that experience has made me much more attentive to the decisions composers make within their works."

Inspiration for her creative work comes from everywhere. Beyond music, she said, "images, landscapes, memories, a line from a book, a particular atmosphere — these can linger for a long time and eventually find their way into music." She writes mainly chamber music but hopes one day to compose a violin concerto. She is careful, however, not to feel bound by career-building pressures. "I don't want to be tied to the idea that I have to compose," she said. "I want to write naturally, when I genuinely have something I want to express — not out of obligation."

Dueñas said she hopes to experience Korea fully during this visit. She expressed a wish to "try Korean food and see what life is like outside the concert hall."

"If time allows, I'd love to just walk slowly and get to know Korea. I'm a great reader, and I'm particularly fond of the work of Han Kang, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. I've heard that Korea has a remarkable number of outstanding young musicians. I recently had the chance to meet violinist Clara-Jumi Kang, whom I deeply admire. And someday I would very much love to work with conductor Chung Myung-whun."

shee@heraldcorp.com