Maxim Vengerov was born into a musical family on 20 August 1974 in Novosibirsk, Siberia. His mother sang and conducted, and his father played oboe in an orchestra. Maxim heard music even before he was born. “When I was still in Mom’s womb,” he has said, “I heard David Oistrakh give one of his very last concerts in Russia, playing the Tchaikovsky concerto.”
The violinist enjoyed a unique friendship with the great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. “He’s like a grandfather to me,” Vengerov once said in an interview. “He has broadened my views of music and introduced me to composers like Shostakovich and Prokofiev as if they were still alive and I was actually meeting them.”
Maxim Vengerov has been inspired to try out many different styles of music, including baroque, jazz and rock. In 2007 he turned his attention to conducting, becoming the first chief conductor of the Gstaad Festival Orchestra in 2010.
After an arm injury prevented him from performing for several years, he returned to the violin in 2011, and has performed as soloist with many major orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra, often performing a major concerto in the first half and conducting a symphonic work in the second, including Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade in which he also performs the violin solos.
Listen to this amazing performance of the Sibelius Concerto:
