Carnegie Hall

Universally hailed as one of the world’s finest musicians, Grammy Award winner Maxim Vengerov enjoys international acclaim as a conductor and in-demand soloist. Born in 1974, he began his career as a solo violinist at the age of five, won the International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition and Carl Flesch International Violin Competition at ages 10 and 15, respectively, and has gone on to record extensively for high-profile labels that include Melodiya, Teldec, and EMI. He is also the recipient of Gramophone’s Artist of the Year award.

Mr. Vengerov turned his attention to conducting in 2007, following in the footsteps of his mentor, Mstislav Rostropovich. Mr. Vengerov graduated in 2014 with a diploma of excellence from Moscow’s Ippolitov-Ivanov Institute, where he studied with Yuri Simonov, and has since completed a two-year program in opera conducting.

Highlights of the 2018–2019 season included opening the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala’s season with Riccardo Chailly, as well as residencies with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and Paris’s Philharmonie. During the 2019–2020 season, Mr. Vengerov celebrates 40 years on stage with a gala performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall on June 12, for which he is joined by Mischa Maisky, Martha Argerich, and the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director Marios Papadopoulos, as well as students from London’s Royal College of Music. Mr. Vengerov also tours extensively around the world this season in recital.

Since September 2016, Mr. Vengerov has been the Polonsky Visiting Professor of Violin at the Royal College of Music. He is also the Stephan and Viktoria Schmidheiny Stiftungsprofessor at the Mozarteum University Salzburg. In 2012, Mr. Vengerov was awarded an honorary visiting fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford, and in 2019, he received an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Music and was named Chevalier of the Order of Cultural Merit of Monaco. Beginning this year, his new recordings will be released on the classical music streaming service IDAGIO, including Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Myung-Whun Chung, and Live from Carnegie Hall. Mr. Vengerov plays the ex-Kreutzer Stradivari violin from 1727. For additional information, visit nfbm.com.

Internationally acclaimed pianist Polina Osetinskaya began her career at the age of five and was soon acclaimed as a wunderkind in the former Soviet Union at the same time as Maxim Vengerov. She gave her first concert at the age of six and entered the Central Music School of the Moscow Conservatory at the age of seven. Ms. Osetinskaya continued her studies at the Leningrad Conservatory with Marina Wolf and later at the Moscow Conservatory with Vera Gornostaeva.

Ms. Osetinskaya’s onstage chamber partners have included Mr. Vengerov and Julian Milkis, among others. She has worked with conductors who include Teodor Currentzis, Andrey Boreyko, Tugan Sokhiev, Laurent Petitgirard, Yan Pascal Tortelier, and Alexander Sladkovsky. Ms. Osetinskaya has appeared with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Mariinsky Orchestra, and musicAeterna, among others.

Ms. Osetinskaya has performed at London’s Barbican Centre, Vienna’s Musikverein, the Grand Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonia, and the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, as well as in Rome, Milan, Brussels, and Tokyo, and across the United States. She also appears at festivals in Europe, Russia, Mexico, and the United States. Ms. Osetinskaya has released recordings with the Quartz, Naxos, Sony Music, Bel-Aire, and Melodiya labels.

In recital, Ms. Osetinskaya is known for her unusual solo programs that include works by contemporary composers juxtaposed with classical repertoire. She is also at home with works by post–avant-garde composers such as Valentin Silvestrov, Leonid Desyatnikov, and Arvo Pärt. This season, she performs at Vienna’s Musikverein and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie; in Tel Aviv, Milan, and Turin; and on tour in the US with the State Symphony Capella of Russia. Her autobiography Farewell, Sadness—an account of her wunderkind years—is a bestseller.