Carnegie Hall

Hailed as one of the world’s finest musicians, Grammy Award winner Maxim Vengerov enjoys international acclaim as a conductor and as one of the most in-demand soloists. Born in 1974, he won the Henryk Wieniawski and Carl Flesch international competitions at ages 10 and 15, respectively; studied with Galina Turchaninova and Zakhar Bron; made his first recording at the age of 10; and went on to record extensively for high-profile labels, earning Grammy and Gramophone artist of the year awards.

In 2007, Mr. Vengerov followed in the footsteps of his mentor, Mstislav Rostropovich, and turned his attention to conducting. Three years later, he was appointed the first chief conductor of the Gstaad Festival Orchestra.

In recent years, Mr. Vengerov opened the season of the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala with conductor Riccardo Chailly, held residencies with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra and Philharmonie de Paris, and appeared on worldwide recital tours. This season, he opened the Shanghai International Music Festival with Christoph Eschenbach; embarks on recital tours to the US, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia; and performs with orchestras in Vienna, Paris, and Milan.

In 2020, Mr. Vengerov became Classic FM’s first solo artist in residence, releasing a new recording of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with conductor Myung-Whun Chung and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, as well as a live recording of his Carnegie Hall recital in October 2018.

One of Mr. Vengerov’s greatest passions is teaching. He currently holds the Stephan and Viktoria Schmidheiny Stiftungsprofessor at the Mozarteum University Salzburg, and since 2016, he has been the Polonsky Visiting Professor of Violin at the Royal College of Music in London. In 2018, he became the Goodwill Ambassador of the Musica Mundi School, a unique institution that supports young talent. In order to make music education more accessible, he established his own online teaching platform in January 2021 at maximvengerov.com.

Mr. Vengerov has received numerous honors, including a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance and a World Economic Forum Crystal Award. He was also named a chevalier of the Ordre du Mérite Culturel from the palace in Monte Carlo. Mr. Vengerov plays the ex-Kreutzer Stradivari (1727).

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. She entered the Central School of Music at the Moscow Conservatory at seven, continued her studies at the Leningrad Conservatory (now St. Petersburg Conservatory) under Marina Wolf, and later attended the Moscow Conservatory studying under the famous Vera Gornostaeva.

This season, Ms. Osetinskaya makes solo debuts at the Berlin Philharmonie, National Gallery in London, and Laeiszhalle in Hamburg performing unaccompanied works by J. S. Bach. She will also perform in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Israel, Cyprus, the US, and South America.

Ms. Osetinskaya has performed on major stages including Vienna’s Musikverein, London’s Barbican Centre, and Rome’s Teatro Argentina, as well as in Italy, Germany, Poland, the US, Russia, and Israel. She has appeared with musicAeterna, the Mariinsky Orchestra, Evgeny Svetlanov Symphony Orchestra, and Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. This season, she performs with the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, Slovak Philharmonic, and National Chamber Orchestra of Moldova. She has worked with conductors Teodor Currentzis, Andrey Boreyko, Tugan Sokhiev, Laurent Petitgirard, Yan Pascal Tortelier, and Alexander Sladkovsky.

In recital, Ms. Osetinskaya is known for her experimental programs, juxtaposing works by contemporary composers with traditional classical repertoire. She is also very much at home with post–avant-garde composers such as Valentin Silvestrov, Leonid Desyatnikov, and Arvo Pärt. She has recorded on the Quartz, Naxos, Sony Music, Bel Air, and Melodiya labels.

Ms. Osetinskaya has been awarded the Maly Triumph prize, and wrote her autobiography Farewell, Sadness—an account of her wunderkind years—which became a bestseller.