Maxim Vengerov, who was born in 1974 in Novosibirsk, received his violin training from Galina Turchaninova and Zakhar Bron. In 1985 he became the first 10-year-old to win the Wieniawski Young Violin Player Competition in Poland, and at the 1990 International Carl Flesch Violin Competition he won first prize, the performance prize, and the audience prize. The international career that he has developed since then has led him to partner with the most acclaimed conductors and with all the major orchestras. His recordings have garnered the Grammy Award and the Classical Brit Award, two Gramophone Awards and Echo Classic Awards each, and five Edison Awards. In 2007 Vengerov expanded his spectrum and began studying conducting as well, receiving his degree with distinction in 2014 under Yuri Simonov at the Ippolitov-Ivanov Institute in Moscow. In 2010 he was appointed Chief Conductor of the Gstaad Festival Orchestra, and in November 2017 he will make his debut as an opera conductor in Brisbane with Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. In the 2016-17 season Vengerov concertized with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and went on a tour to Israel and Europe with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra; he played Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and conducted Dvořák’s Ninth with the Munich Philharmonic and performed the Tchaikovsky Concerto and led Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Also a passionate teacher, Maxim Vengerov is a professor at the Royal College of Music in London and at the International Menuhin Music Academy. Since 1997 Vengerov has been a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, and in this function he has played music for children in Uganda, Thailand, the Balkans, and Turkey; he is also the patron of an education program in South Africa. Vengerov plays an ex-Kreutzer Stradivari built in 1727.

May 2017