Maxim Vengerov

Maxim Vengerov won the Wieniawski junior competition in 1984, at ten, and the Carl Flesch competition in 1990. Born in 1974, he studied with Galina Turchaninova and then with Zakhar Bron, recorded for Teldec and EMI through his twenties and took a Grammy in 2004. From 2007 he turned to the podium, training with Yuri Simonov and becoming the first chief conductor of the Gstaad Festival Orchestra in 2010. He was the first classical musician appointed a UNICEF International Goodwill Ambassador, in 1997, and in 2006 co-founded Musicians of Tomorrow, a school in northern Israel, with Anna Rosnovsky. He has taught at the Royal College of Music in London and at the Menuhin Academy in Switzerland, and plays the 1727 ex-Kreutzer Stradivari, which he has played since 1998. He started the violin at five with Galina Turchaninova, moved to Lübeck in 1989 with Bron's family and other pupils, made his first recording at ten, and at eighteen recorded the Shostakovich First Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra under Mstislav Rostropovich, whose friendship shaped his Shostakovich and Prokofiev. He was Polonsky Visiting Professor of Violin at the Royal College of Music from September 2016 to December 2024 and also teaches at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, with an honorary professorship of the Saint Petersburg Conservatoire awarded in 2020. Classic FM made him artist in residence in January 2020, the year he joined IDAGIO as ambassador, and in January 2021 he opened an online teaching initiative.