ÍøÆغÚÁÏ

María Dueñas' prowess as a violinist made her an international sensation before the age of 20. After several competition wins, one of which earned the loan of a Stradivarius violin, Dueñas was signed to the Deutsche Grammophon label in 2022 and issued her debut album there, Beethoven and Beyond, the following year. She is also a composer and chamber musician.

María Dueñas Fernández was born on December 4, 2002, in Granada, Spain. Dueñas began musical lessons in Granada at age five, earning a scholarship from Juventudes Musicales Madrid in 2014 to study at the Carl Maria von Weber College of Music in Dresden. She then moved to Austria to study with Boris Kuschnir at the Music and Arts University of Vienna and the University of Graz. In 2016, her piano piece, Farewell, earned a prize at the Von fremden Ländern und Menschen Competition for Young Composers. The piece was recorded for a short film starring Dueñas and performed by Evgeny Sinaiski. She has also composed her own cadenzas for concertos by Mozart and Beethoven. Dueñas won the 2018 Vladimir Spivakov International Violin Competition, which brought with it a Riccardo Antoniazzi violin. Several successes followed, including winning the 2021 Getting to Carnegie Hall Competition and the Viktor Tretyakov International Violin Competition. Perhaps her most notable success also took place that year, when she won first prize and the audience prize at the Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists. With the Menuhin Competition win, Dueñas was loaned a Stradivarius violin from the private collection of Jonathan Moulds. She also performs on a Nicolò Gagliano instrument from 1734 and the "Camposelice" Stradivarius from 1710.

As a chamber musician, Dueñas has performed with pianist Itamar Golan, cellist Pablo Ferrández, and violinist Renaud Capuçon, among others. She has appeared as a soloist with orchestras throughout the world, such as the Toronto, Detroit, and Pittsburgh Symphonies, the NDR Elbphilharmonie, and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg. She was named a BBC New Generation Artist for the 2021-2023 seasons and is the dedicatee of several works, including solo caprices by Jordi Cervelló and Gabriela Ortiz's Violin Concerto "Altar de Cuerda," which she premiered with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel in May of 2022. That year, Dueñas signed an exclusive recording contract with the Deutsche Grammophon label and issued her debut there, Beethoven and Beyond, in 2023. Recorded live with Manfred Honeck and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the album features Beethoven's Violin Concerto with cadenzas written by Dueñas. Along with the concerto are works by Kreisler, Saint-Saëns, Spohr, Wieniawski, and Ysaÿe, as well as cadenzas written by those composers for the Beethoven concerto. ~ Keith Finke

Author of the popular Symphonie espagnole for violin and orchestra, a work which captivates the listener with its melodic charm and great passion, Lalo was a major composer of orchestral and chamber music at a time when French musicians were dominated by an impulse to compose for the theater. His lesser known, but by no means little accomplished, works include the powerfully emotional Cello Concerto in D minor, a work which aptly makes use of the instrument's expressive potential, and the ballet, Namouna.

Lalo left home at the age of 16 because his father did not want him to be a professional musician. He studied the violin at the Paris Conservatoire, also learning composition privately. While supporting himself as a violinist, performing and giving lessons, Lalo also composed. His early works, published in the 1840s, include pieces for the violin. In the 1850s, Lalo became an important member of a movement to revive chamber music in France. By the mid-1850s, he had already composed two piano trios, which show a considerable mastery of that form. In 1855, Lalo helped found the Armingaud Quartet; this ensemble was created to promote the music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and Mendelssohn. Lalo, who was the quartet's violist and second violinist, composed a string quartet in 1859, thus enhancing his stature as a composer of chamber music. In 1865, Lalo married Julie Bernier de Maligny, a singer who eventually became a leading performer of his songs.

Nevertheless, Lalo wished to compose for the stage, and in 1866 he started writing Fiesque, an opera based on Friedrich Schiller's play Fiesko. While Lalo was pleased by his opera, the Paris Opera decided against producing this work. However, despite this setback, Lalo's career flourished. The creation, in 1871, of the Societe Nationale de Musique, whose program was to promote the works of contemporary composers, provided Lalo with an impetus to continue composing for the orchestra. Thus, during the 1870s, Lalo composed several impressive works, including a Violin Concerto in F major, the famous Symphonie espagnole, the Cello Concerto, and the Fantaisie norvegienne for violin and orchestra.

In 1875, Lalo started work on Le Roi d'Ys, an opera based on a Breton legend. Feeling that his work was nearing completion, Lalo offered it to the Opera in 1881. Once again, theaters refused to produce Lalo's work; however, perhaps wishing to somehow compensate the composer, the Opera asked him to compose a ballet. During 1881 and 1882 Lalo wrote Namouna, based on a story from Casanova's Memoires, and the ballet was performed in 1883 to a less-than-appreciative audience. Throughout the 1880s, however, Lalo continued promoting Le Roi d'Ys. The opera was finally performed at the Opera-Comique in 1888, and the reception was extremely favorable. Following this belated triumph, Lalo embarked on several new projects, including Neron, a pantomime, which was performed in 1891. A new opera, La jacquerie, remained unfinished.

Pianist Itamar Golan is one of Israel's foremost chamber music players and accompanists. He is also active as a soloist and is a prominent educator.

Golan was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, then in the Soviet Union, on August 3, 1970. His family moved to Israel when he was one, and he studied piano there with Lara Vodovoz and Emmanuel Krasovsky. At seven, he gave his first recital, and he attracted enough attention to win a scholarship from the American-Israeli Cultural Foundation for study in the U.S. in 1985. For the next four years, he studied at the New England Conservatory, working with Patricia Zander and Leonard Shure. He also took chamber music courses with Chaim Taub, and chamber music would become a major focus of his career. Golan has performed widely as an accompanist and chamber musician in both Israel and the U.S., with both instrumental and vocal collaborators. The latter group includes soprano Barbara Hendricks. Golan has accompanied top-flight violinists Janine Jansen, Maxim Vengerov, and Shlomo Mintz, among others; he has also performed with cellist Matt Haimovitz. Thanks to his international circle of collaborators, Golan has amassed a substantial recording catalog that began with Virtuoso Vengerov in 1993.

As a soloist, Golan has appeared with the Israel Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic, and he has performed at the Salzburg, Tanglewood, and Verbier Festivals, among many others. In 1991, Golan took a faculty position at the Manhattan School of Music, moving after that to the Paris Conservatory, where he remains the professor of chamber music. He backed violinist Kyung-Wha Chung on her Souvenirs album in 1999 and Jansen on her high-profile recital Beau Soir in 2011. Golan joined cellist Erica Piccotti on a recital of works by Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Franck on the Warner Classics label in 2018. His chamber music recording credits include Haimovitz's album containing the Schubert Arpeggione Sonata, D. 821, in 2016. After backing violinist Charlie Siem on the 2020 recital Between the Clouds, Golan returned with three albums in 2023, backing Siem once again on a recital of sonatas by Grieg and Vaughan Williams; violinist David Grimal on the album Poulenc, Stravinsky, Prokofiev; and young violinist Luka Faulisi on the Sony Classical album Aria. ~ James Manheim