Music I'm Listening To: Maria Dueñas with the San Francisco Symphony

I attended the Friday 12 June performance of the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall. On the program were a new piece by Iranian composer Iman Habibi entitled Zhian, the Korngold Violin Concerto, and, after intermission, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. On the podium was guest conductor Tianyu Lu, an entirely new name to me. The soloist in the concerto, I was excited to find was Spanish violinist, Maria Dueñas. I say “excited to find” because, being a subscriber to the symphony, I buy tickets in May for the following year’s season, and by June, the end of the season, I frequently forget who’s performing by the time the concert comes around. The Symphony never prints the full program on the tickets, so I wasn’t aware until I sat down with the program at my seat. More importantly, perhaps, I had never heard of Dueñas last year when buying the subscription, so, at that time I would have had no particular expectations. I became aware of her fairly recently and I’ve been impressed by what I’ve heard, so it was a very pleasant surprise to learn as I settled in that I was about to hear her in person. 

I wasn’t disappointed. While the Korngold isn’t among my favorite violin concertos, it has its moments and Dueñas attacked it with vigor. I particularly enjoyed the sound of her violin in the low register. It had an extraordinary, rich, throaty, tone that fit the concerto perfectly, I thought. According to some Internet sleuthing, she plays a number of different violins on loan to her but she appears to have played a 1779 Giambattista Guadagnini violin on Friday, this one on loan from the Karolina Blaberg Foundation via the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben. She was called back for an encore (something I didn’t recognize) after an extended standing ovation. The crowd loved it. Conductor Lu was great fun to watch. She’s a tiny woman but she is overflowing with energy. A fun concert all around.