The press release, https://www.colinscolumn.com/maria-duenas-presents-her-highly-anticipated-deutsche-grammophon-debut-album/, and for María Dueñas a bold debut on DG by recording Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. It’s a spacious account, very lyrical, lovely tone, spot-on intonation, totally assured, although she is closely balanced and the recorded sound, somewhat airless and edgy (January this year, Musikverien), benefits from a volume reduction, with Manfred Honeck and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra at times a little bullish, if also inward and sensitive to match the soloist. As a calling-card for Dueñas, this will do agreeably, especially as the slow movement is eloquent and the Finale persuasively measured and poised. Certainly Dueñas is a serious artist not doing anything attention-seeking, and her own cadenza for the first movement is impressively lofty, although the one in the Finale is off the scale lengthwise and also as a related counterpart to the movement itself.
Cadenzas – the second disc (taped July 2022 in Berlin), eighteen minutes, includes cadenzas by Spohr, Ysaÿe, Saint-Saëns, Wieniawski and Kreisler, but not those by Joachim, Schneiderhan (a transcription of Beethoven’s, with timpani, for his Piano Concerto version), Schnittke (which Gidon Kremer championed), or others (Ricci was more comprehensive years ago), complemented by a piece each with orchestra by those composers who are cadenza-represented, of which Spohr’s touching Adagio also features a harp, Ysaÿe’s Berceuse is deeply felt, Saint-Saëns’s Havanaise is siesta-like either side of the lively middle section, and Wieniawski’s dusky Légende and Kreisler’s old-world charming Liebesleid all confirm Dueñas as a music-serving virtuoso. DG 486 3512 (2 CDs).