MAXIM VENGEROV, Violin
Lilya Zilberstein, Piano
Monday, October 16, 2006 8PM
BCPA/ Premier Series Opening Night

At just thirty years of age, Grammy Award-winning violinist Maxim Vengerov is recognised as one of the world’s most exciting violinists. Since he began playing at the age of four-and-a-half, he has evolved from a precociously talented child into an assured virtuoso. Following his first recital in his hometown of Novosibirsk, Siberia, at the age of five, he studied with Galina Tourchaninova and Professor Zakhar Bron and went on to win the First Prize in the Junior Wieniawski Competition in Poland when he was just ten years old. In 1990, at the age of fifteen, he took top honors at the Carl Flesch International Violin Competition which confirmed his reputation as a musician of the very highest order. Vengerov’s accolades are indeed plentiful, including both the Gramophone Young Artist of the Year, and Ritmo (Spain) Artist of the Year in 1994. In 1996 he was awarded Record of the Year by Gramophone Magazine and received Grammy nominations for Classical Album of the Year and Best Instrumental Soloist with Orchestra for his recordings of the Shostakovich and Prokofiev Concerto No1. Vengerov received the Edison Award in 1997 in the Best Concerto Recording category, for his Shostakovich and Prokofiev Concerto No. 2 recordings and in 2003 for his solo CD Bach, Ysaÿe, Schedrin on EMI Classics. In September 2002, Vengerov was awarded Gramophone Artist of the Year, an Edisson Award and was a Grammy Award winner in 2004 for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (with Orchestra) for the Britten: Violin Concerto/Walton: Viola Concerto. In 1997, at the age of twenty-three, Vengerov was appointed Goodwill Ambassador by the United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the first classical musician to be appointed in this role. By playing for abducted child-soldiers in Uganda, disadvantaged children in Harlem, children suffering from drug addiction in Thailand, and children on both sides of the Kosovan ethnic divide, it has afforded him an opportunity to both inspire children world-wide, and to inspire others to raise funds for UNICEF-assisted programs.