Maria Dueñas

María Dueñas (Maria Dueñas Fernandez) is a Spanish violinist and composer, born (in Granada) on December 4, 2002. She is very likely the best Spanish violinist since Pablo Sarasate (1844-1908.) She is also known as a former child prodigy. She has been winning violin competitions since she was 14 years old, including the Zhuhai (China), the Vladimir Spivakov (Russia), the G.P Telemann (Poland), the Yankelevitch (Russia), the Leonid Kogan (Belgium), and the Luigi Zanuccoli (Italy) violin competitions. * (see comments below) Since she is also a composer, she writes her own cadenzas for each concerto she plays. As a member of the Hamamelis Quartet, she also won first prize at the Fidelio Chamber Music Competition in Vienna in 2017. She began her violin studies at age 5 in Spain. I do not know who her first teacher was. At age 7, she entered the Granada Conservatory. She made her local debut with the Granada Symphony at age 11, playing the first concerto of Mozart. Andrea Marcon was on the podium. When she was 12 years old, her family moved to Vienna so that she could study with Boris Kuschnir (well-known violin pedagogue) at the University for Music and Art in Graz and at the Music and Arts University in Vienna, Austria. (Graz is about a two-hour drive from Vienna, driving south.) In this effort, she was assisted by Russian violinist, Vladimir Spivakov. (Spivakov’s Moscow Virtuosi chamber orchestra has a very strong connection to Spain.) In September of 2019, she was named Artist of the Month by Musical America being only 16 years old. Dueñas has already concertized in many countries around the world (including the U.S.) and has played in some of the most prestigious concert halls but, since she is still a student at the University, understandably spends most of her time in Europe. Here is one of her many YouTube video performances. You can judge her virtuosity and style for yourself. Dueñas speaks four languages fluently – German, English, French, and Spanish. She is also currently studying the Russian language. Two of her violins have been a Nicolo Gagliano (1764), on loan from the German Musical Life Foundation and the Muntz Guarneri (1736) on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation. I do not know if she is still using either one of those fine violins. The photo is courtesy of David Ausserhoffer.

Arkadi Futer

Arkadi Futer (Arkadi Naumovitch Futer) was a Russian violinist and teacher born (in Moscow) on September 6, 1932.  He is known for his impressive recording of Wieniawski’s first violin concerto in F sharp minor, but he is also known for having spent a large part of his career in Spain.  For some time, he was concertmaster of Vladimir Spivakov’s Moscow Virtuosi, which was founded in 1979.  I do not know if he was the initial concertmaster – he probably was.  The Moscow Virtuosi later resided in Spain for nine years (1990-1999.)  When the Moscow Virtuosi left Spain, Futer stayed behind.  He then became concertmaster of the Oviedo Symphony Orchestra.  He was 67 years old.  (Oviedo is the small capital city of the principality of Asturias, located in northern Spain, next to the Bay of Biscay.)  Prior to his association with the Moscow Virtuosi, Futer was concertmaster of the Moscow Philharmonic, the Moscow Radio Orchestra, and the Orchestra of the Film Industry of the USSR.  He was also a member of at least two string quartets.  Futer began his studies at age 7 in Kiev, in the years of 1939 or 1940, I don’t know which.  His first teacher was Nina Dulova.  In 1943, he returned to Moscow with his family.  He was 11 years old.  He entered the Tchaikovsky Conservatory at age 18.  Yuri Yankelevitch was one of his teachers.  He later graduated from the conservatory with top honors.  He was named Artist of the Russian Republic in 1998.  Futer died (in Gijon, Asturias, Spain) on September 5, 2011, at (almost) age 79.  His granddaughter, Vera Futer, is now a professor at the University of Oviedo.  Here is an audio file of Futer’s Wieniawski recording. 

Uto Ughi

Uto Ughi is an Italian violinist, teacher, writer, and conductor born (in Busto Arsizio) on January 21, 1944.  His name has been closely associated with the National Academy of Saint Cecilia (in Rome) for many years.  He is a high-profile promoter of musical culture all over the world, but especially in Italy, as is Vladimir Spivakov in Russia.  Ughi has founded several music festivals along the way.  His discography covers most of the standard violin repertoire.  Because he came of age in the 1960s, he has had a chance to work with some of the legendary names in the conducting world (who are for the most part now dead) as well as the most current luminaries of the baton.  He began his lessons at age 4.  His father was an amateur violinist but his first formal teacher was a nameless violinist from the opera orchestra of La Scala.  At age 7, Ughi gave his first recital in Milan.  Though it’s hard to believe, according to one source, he played some Paganini Caprices as well as the ubiquitous Bach Chaconne at that recital.  Ughi studied for ten years at the Chigiana Music Academy in Siena (Tuscany.)  He also took lessons from George Enesco for a time.  He began his uninterrupted concertizing career in 1959 – he was 15 years old.  Among his pupils are Augustin Hadelich and Sayaka Shoji.  Ughi’s recording of Paganini’s fourth concerto is my favorite recording of that particular concerto.  Here is a YouTube video of one of his performances.  He has also recorded a seldom-played work – the Schumann concerto.  Here is the first movement from that recording - the second and third movements are here.  Between 1987 and 1992, he was the principal conductor of the Orchestra of the St Cecilia Academy.  Ughi has owned or played the Kreutzer Stradivarius (the one from 1701 – there are 4 Strads named Kreutzer), the General Kyd, the Ole Bull, and a Guarneri from 1744.  

Boris Belkin

Boris Belkin (Boris Davidovich Belkin) is a Russian violinist and teacher born (in Yekaterinburg – aka Sverdlovsk) on January 26, 1948.  He began his violin studies at age 6.  One year later, he made his first public appearance with Kiril Kondrashin on the podium.  He was a student at the Central Music School (for specially gifted children) in Moscow, a branch of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory.  At the Moscow Conservatory, his teachers – among others – were Yuri Yankelevich (teacher also of Leonid Kogan, Ilya Kaler, Zakhar Bron, Vladimir Spivakov, and Ruben Aharonyan), Maya Glezarova (assistant to Yuri Yankelevich), and Felix Andrievsky.  He began his concertizing career in Russia while still a student, a very common practice everywhere.  In 1974, at age 26, he left Russia and settled in Western Europe.  (He had applied to take part in the Paganini Competition in Genoa but the authorities denied him a visa so he then applied to emigrate to Israel and from there, he made his way to Belgium.)  He has appeared with virtually every major orchestra in the world.  He performed the Tchaikovsky concerto with the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein on April 22 and 24, 1975.  On June 6 and 7, 1978, he played the Tchaikovsky concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic.  Belkin's discography is not extensive by any measure but it includes the rarely performed Strauss concerto.  He began teaching in Italy – at the Accademia Chigiana (founded in 1932) – in 1986.  He also teaches in the Netherlands at the Advanced Music School (College of Music) in Maastricht (about 90 miles south east of Amsterdam – the city is a lot closer to Cologne, Germany and Brussels, Belgium than it is to Amsterdam.)  Belkin has played a Stradivarius from the Russian State collection, a 1754 Guadagnini, and two modern violins (1994 and 2007) by Roberto Regazzi.  For many years, he has used a bow made by a famous maker - Daniel Tobias Navea Vera.  Here is one of Belkin’s YouTube files.  

Vladimir Spivakov

Vladimir Spivakov (Vladimir Teodorovich Spivakov) is a Russian violinist, conductor, and teacher born on September 12, 1944 (Heifetz was 43 years old.)  He is best known as the Director of the Moscow Virtuosi, a Russian chamber orchestra.  However, he was also the conductor of the Russian National Orchestra (1999-2002 – this is a privately-owned orchestra founded by pianist Mikhail Pletnev.) and has guest-conducted numerous orchestras outside of Russia, including the Santa Cecilia Orchestra of Rome, the Houston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the London Symphony, the English Chamber Orchestra, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.  He first formally studied at Moscow’s Central School of Music, under Lubov Siegal.   After that, he continued his studies with Veniamin Sher at the music school of the Leningrad Conservatory (1956-1960), and with Yuri Yankelevich at the Moscow Conservatory, graduating in 1967.  It is not common knowledge that he also studied with David Oistrakh.  By age 13, he had already won first prize in a conducting competition in Moscow.  Conducting he studied with Israel Gusman in Russia and later on with Leonard Bernstein and Lorin Maazel in the U.S.  For a while, he used Bernstein’s baton to conduct all his concerts - the baton was a 1984 gift from Bernstein.  He might still be using it.  While still in school (in Russia) and after graduation, Spivakov won prizes in several competitions, including the Thibaud in Paris (1965), Paganini in Genoa (1967), the Montreal (1969), and the Tchaikovsky in Moscow (second place after Gidon Kremer, 1970.)  By 1970, he was an established concertizing violinist in Russia and Europe.  He first played in New York (USA) in 1975 (in recital) and 1976 (two recitals in Carnegie Hall.)  He toured with the Moscow State Orchestra in 1977.  In that same year, he made his debut with the London Symphony.  On January 11, 1979, Spivakov made his debut with the New York Philharmonic in New York, playing Haydn’s first violin concerto; however, he had already played with the Philharmonic in Leningrad, Russia (on September 8, 1976 with Leinsdorf conducting.)  Henceforth, Spivakov visited the U.S. regularly and played with the orchestras of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and San Francisco, among others, under various well-known conductors.  In the summer of 1979 he made his U.S. debut as a conductor with the Chicago Symphony at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois (about 20 miles North of Chicago.)  In that same year, he founded the Moscow Virtuosi, with which he has until now appeared both as violinist and conductor all over the world.  The Moscow Virtuosi was originally made up of Russia's international prize winners but did not enjoy official recognition – and public funding that goes with it – until 1983.  In 1989 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Colmar International Festival in France, which has become one of Europe's leading music festivals, though I had not heard of it until now.  He then (1989) emigrated to Spain where he remained for a few years and where the Moscow Virtuosi had been granted (by someone in the aristocracy) a five-year residency in Madrid.  It is stated in some sources that he also taught at the Madrid Conservatory though I doubt he spent much time there.  Spivakov is also known as a humanitarian and social figure.  In May 1994 (some sources say 1993) he established the Vladimir Spivakov International Charitable Foundation to support young talented musicians, painters, and dancers, and to help orphans in Russia, providing medical care for critically ill children and wheelchairs for disabled young people.  He has worked on behalf of victims of the Stalin regime (1933-1953) and children who suffered from the nuclear power plant accident in Chernobyl.  He has received some of the highest honors available to civilian Russian citizens.  He is also the founder of the European Sakharov Foundation.  Vladimir Spivakov has made more than 40 recordings of a variety of works for the BMG/RCA Red Seal label and there are several videos of his playing on YouTube.  Also for RCA Red Seal, he has recorded the violin concertos of Brahms, Prokofiev, Sibelius and Tchaikovsky.  In 2003, at the suggestion of then Russian President Vladimir Putin, Spivakov formed the National Philharmonic of Russia of which he is now Artistic Director and Principal Conductor.  Just as William Primrose has a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, Spivakov had, on September 12, 1994, a real star named after him by the Russian International Observatory.  I don’t know where that star is located.  His teacher (Yankelevich) bequeathed to him a Francesco Gobetti violin (1716) which Spivakov used until 1997.  After 1997, Spivakov has used a Stradivarius violin (1712) provided for life by his friends. 

New Russian Quartet

The New Russian Quartet is the resident string quartet of the Moscow Conservatory.  Established in January, 2008, it is already one of the world's best string quartets. Its members are also all graduates of the Conservatory.  It is more or less the equivalent of the Juilliard Quartet in the U.S.  Julia Igonina is the quartet's first violinist, Elena Kharitonova plays second violin, Alexander Galkovsky is the violist, and Alexey Steblev is the cellist.  Except for Julia Igonina, who is actually a brilliant concert violinist, they are all seasoned chamber music players.  As their website indicates, the name of the ensemble implies that the musicians  remain faithful to the Russian performing tradition as they also explore uncharted areas in chamber music.   Their core repertoire consists of the standard literature by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Bartok and all the rest but they also perform contemporary works composed specifically for them.  They have collaborated with such outstanding artists as Jessie Norman, Vladimir Spivakov, Alexander Rudin, Yuri Bashmet, and Shlomo Mintz (playing viola.)  The New Russian Quartet frequently performs in Russia’s best concert venues and participates in music festivals throughout Europe and Asia.  As far as I know, they have not yet toured the U.S.  The members of the quartet perform on Italian instruments from the Russian State's collection.  They also have many superlative videos on YouTube.