Bruce Hodges reports on the performance of Lalo, Terence Blanchard and Sibelius at Marian Anderson Hall, Philadelphia, PA, US, on 29 November 2025
Still only 22 years old, María Dueñas has leapt into the spotlight after winning top honours at the 2021 Menuhin Competition.
On this occasion, in Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the young violinist fairly hurled herself into the flowery score. That uninhibitedness, while appealing on its own terms (and prompting a standing ovation at the end), might be tempered a bit as her career progresses – and she does seem destined for a starry future.
In her technical arsenal, an impressively precise, almost robotic bow arm helped articulate the composer’s more explosive sequences. Her instrument, an 18th-century one by Nicolò Gagliano, makes a fine partner.
After the first movement, applause broke out, causing the conductor – ever the polite educator – to face the audience, his palm extended, and tick off each finger as a reminder: ‘five movements’. For the encore, Dueñas relaxed into a welcome contrast, Franz von Vecsey’s Valse triste, which again brought the audience to its feet.
The evening opened with the suite from Terence Blanchard’s opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, which Nézet-Séguin had premiered in 2024. The second time around, the orchestra showed even more radiance. But perhaps the best confirmation of the orchestra’s current power came at the end, in a feverish reading of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony.
BRUCE HODGES
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