María Dueñas makes an impressive Tanglewood debut with Mendelssohn

Music Director Andris Nelsons began his final weekend conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood this summer with an unusually shaped programme, described in the accompanying notes as “works suggesting contemplation and reflection.” Not only did the Adagio from Mahler’s Tenth Symphony precede Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, which followed after intermission, but the concert concluded, somewhat anticlimactically, with an overture.

Nevertheless, the selection and arrangement of the evening’s works made sense from multiple perspectives. With its majesty and tranquility, the first part of Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage completed the trajectory opened by Bach’s brief Air, played here with spaciousness but without heaviness by an extended string ensemble including eight double basses. This gesture carried added resonance given Mendelssohn’s lifelong reverence for Bach, whose music he not only studied but famously revived and championed. It also recalled a turning point in Mendelssohn’s own career: Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt opened the first programme he conducted as music director of the Gewandhausorchester, the same post now held by Nelsons.

Another connection was audible in the overture’s subdued introduction, which subtly reflected the string textures and colors that had emerged earlier in Mahler’s Adagio, drawing once more on the expressive strength of the BSO’s strings. The echo helped integrate Mendelssohn’s response to Goethe’s paired poems into the broader emotional arc of the programme. The “calm sea”, with its sense of suspended motion and latent tension, was rendered through delicately shaded winds and a low, glowing string palette that conveyed stillness without stagnation. The transition to the Allegro brought a shift in tone, but not in temperature. The “prosperous voyage” unfolded with elegance and control, though its rhythmic energy felt restrained. The brass gave shape and brilliance to the closing phrases, while textures remained transparent throughout. The final pages registered more as a formal resolution than a moment of culmination, consistent with the programme’s contemplative character.

At 22, María Dueñas brought a striking combination of daredevil technique and musical maturity to Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor. Her phrasing in the opening movement was elegant yet fearless, with finely spun lines that never lost momentum or tonal clarity, even in the most exposed passages. The cadenza, delivered with crisp articulation and a sense of inner direction, emerged as a natural extension of the movement rather than a display set apart. In the Andante, Dueñas played with a restrained lyricism that avoided sentimentality, allowing the long lines to unfold with ease and clarity. The finale, impeccably clean and fleet, also favoured control over abandon. 

Throughout, Nelsons and the BSO offered a light, responsive accompaniment that maintained clarity and balance, giving the soloist space without receding into neutrality. As an encore, Dueñas offered Franz von Vecsey’s Valse triste, a brief, nostalgic miniature that suited the overall character of the evening’s music: refined, introspective and free of excess. For a BSO debut, it was impressive not just in its polish, but in its poise: a performance that conveyed both the freshness of youth and the self-awareness of an artist whose sense of form and restraint belied her youth.

Andris Nelsons shaped Mahler’s Adagio as a gradual expression of grief and longing, drawing warmth and weight from the prominent violas. The sustained string lines were spacious yet focused, allowing tension to accumulate. Winds and low brass lent a dusky, inward hue to the orchestral fabric, while Nelsons let the movement unfold with a calm sense of inevitability. When the dissonant climax arrived, it felt less like rupture than release, subsumed into the music’s quiet, aching descent.