There’s a fascinating moment in the music documentary Living the Dream. Mstislav Rostropovich, the 20th century’s leading cellist, but here acting as a conductor, is rehearsing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in preparation for a recording.
“Unfortunately, you’re being too selfish here,” the old master, then in his late 70s, tells the guy with the fiddle, who is Maxim Vengerov, the documentary’s subject. Vengerov isn’t a kid; he’s 30, and is already among the greats of his instrument. Was that the last time another musician called Vengerov selfish?
“I think so, yeah,” smiles the violin superstar, who visits New Zealand this month to play the Sibelius concerto with the NZSO and Auckland Philharmonia. “But Rostropovich always found a way, without offending, to let me know clearly that I had such a long way to go.”
It’s a humble admission from a musician who, by the time he became internationally known in his late teens, had already won the Wieniawski and Carl Flesch competitions, and signed a contract with Teldec records.
Rostropovich died in 2007, but Vengerov still refers to the cellist’s musical truths. I particularly liked this one: “Rostropovich always told me, ‘Don’t use the music to express your feelings, but use yourself to reinvent the composer.’ These are subtle but very significant differences and approaches.”
Born in Novosibirsk, Siberia, in 1974, like most great artists, Vengerov started early, and by age 6 was already gaining recognition.
“I never felt like a child prodigy,” Vengerov says. “The environment I was raised in demanded a lot, even from kids. There were prodigious children all over the place.” The first time he visited Moscow – “I was 6 or 7″ – was for a competition, where he performed the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto.
“I remember it as if it were today,” Vengerov recalls. “An elderly gentleman came backstage and said, ‘First of all, I’m going to pay you a compliment. You’re not a child, you’re playing like an adult, and from here, I’m going to judge you as an adult, not a child.’”
Accolades followed. His album of Prokofiev and Shostakovich concertos, recorded when Vengerov was 19, claimed Gramophone magazine’s 1995 album of the year, at the time the recording industry’s most-coveted classical music prize.
The conductor of that CD was again Rostropovich, who had been close to both composers. That sort of connection-to-source means a lot to Vengerov, who also idolises violinists from the early years of recording. “Kreisler, Ysaÿe, Enescu – this generation is where I draw inspiration; these are my guiding lights, alongside David Oistrakh and Jascha Heifetz.”
You can hear that old-world influence in Vengerov’s Sibelius concerto recording with Daniel Barenboim – another mentor – from 1996, which swoons and swells with silent-movie melodrama. He probably won’t play it like that in New Zealand. A serious weightlifting injury forced him to pause his solo career, and for several years, Vengerov focused on conducting. As a result, when he plays a concerto these days, he thinks more symphonically.
“The violinist is a soloist in a way, but it’s an obbligato, if you want, integrated into the texture of the orchestra.”
In recent years, Vengerov has become an advocate of the original 1904 version of the Sibelius. It’s more difficult – Sibelius, a violinist, wanted a work too hard to play himself – but also unconvincing, perfect for a virtuoso, less compelling for an audience. In New Zealand, we’ll hear the more successful, significantly more famous, 1905 revision, which Vengerov considers better tailored to Western audiences.
“The second version is the pinnacle of violin repertoire,” says Vengerov. “It’s easy to play, but also hard to play. I don’t mean technical things. It’s violinistically written, unlike Beethoven, who didn’t care about performers, he just wrote music and you have to figure it out. Sibelius is different because he played the instrument, and of the violin concertos written by violinists, it’s by far the greatest.”
As well as playing and conducting, Vengerov devotes time to teaching. He used to be a professor at Saarbrücken Hochschule, Germany, which he somehow crowbarred between his 70-80 concerts a year. Family commitments mean he no longer teaches individual pupils, but he regularly gives masterclasses and will do so here, for three University of Auckland violin students. “When you meet students, you make a connection and you try to elevate this person over 25-30 minutes; it is powerful. With two sentences, you can change someone’s life. You can also kill them, and that’s the greatest responsibility of the teacher, so you have to be careful what you say and how you say it.”
Vengerov expects a similarly life-changing experience in his audiences.
“You get into the zone together,” he says. “If there is the right atmosphere, the right connection, people will not be the same after the concert.”
Vengerov talks often about using music to make connections. When we speak, he is on the line from Monaco, which feels appropriately luxurious for someone who has reached his profession’s pinnacle.
There’s another side to his life, though. He has been a Unicef goodwill ambassador since 1997, another way for Vengerov to forge life-changing connections.
It has taken him a long, long way from the super yachts bobbing in the Mediterranean. His first field trip was to Uganda, which had just emerged from a civil war. There, he spent time with children who’d been abducted by rebels and were now in rehabilitation camps.
“That trip was one of the most emotional experiences of my life,” he says. “I’ve seen children in trauma, with missing limbs, kids who were soldiers, girls who were infected with HIV. It shaped my character and made me realise how fortunate I am.
“Siberia was a tough place, with the weather conditions and the Soviet regime, but I’ve seen that it gets much worse, and I’m thankful that [because of] music, I’m learning so much.”
Maybe some of that wisdom comes from age, too. Vengerov turns 50 while he’s in Aotearoa (“it’s hard to believe I’m making my New Zealand debut at 50. It can’t be a coincidence; I don’t believe in coincidence”). But he insists the little prodigy who didn’t feel like a prodigy is still in there, somewhere.
“If I compare being 5 years old, when I played my first concert, to today, nothing has really changed dramatically. Maybe my experience; the level of appreciation of music has changed. Then, I felt the music was coming from my gut; today, it has many layers. But basically, nothing has changed.”
Maxim Vengerov plays the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the NZSO at the Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, on August 15, and Auckland Philharmonia at Auckland Town Hall on August 22. He gives a masterclass at Auckland’s St Heliers Church and Community Centre on August 23.
