A full crowd fills Hamer Hall for María Dueñas’ long-awaited Australian debut. The 23-year-old Spanish violinist, whose meteoric rise began after winning the Senior Division of the 2021 Menuhin Competition, had been scheduled to perform in Australia in 2023 before the engagement was cancelled.

Under the baton of Jaime Martín, the concert opens with Australian composer Melody Eötvös’s The Deciding Machine, an homage to Ada Lovelace, the 19th-century mathematician and pioneering computer programmer.

Mechanical, overlapping musical figures gradually evolve into a cinematic soundscape of mathematical intrigue. Concertmaster Natalie Chee’s Bartók-inflected solos are polished and assured. While staccato quaver ostinati across the orchestra occasionally challenge ensemble cohesion, it is nevertheless an effective, vividly layered composition that cleverly exploits different instrumental timbres for machine-like effects.

María Dueñas. Photo © Sonja Mueller

Beethoven’s Violin Concerto is a telling choice for Dueñas. The work demands both technical virtuosity and a sophisticated depth of interpretive maturity that is rare for a violinist of her age. Having featured the concerto on her 2023 debut album, with her own cadenzas, Dueñas brings a mesmerising command to the work.