María Dueñas was born on 4 December 2002 and began violin at age seven, studying at the Ángel Barrios Conservatory in Granada before winning a scholarship at eleven to the Carl Maria von Weber College of Music in Dresden, and later studying with Boris Kuschnir in Vienna and Graz. She was named Musical America’s “New Artist of the Month” in September 2019.

Dueñas has won a string of major competitions, including first prize (Senior Division) and the Audience Prize at the 2021 Yehudi Menuhin Competition, the Grand Prize at the 2021 Viktor Tretyakov International Violin Competition, and first prizes at the Vladimir Spivakov (2018) and Yankelevitch (2018) competitions. She signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon in 2022 and performs on a 1710 Stradivarius, the “Camposelice,” on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar%C3%ADa_Due%C3%B1as_(violinist)