Maxim Vengerov – Carnegie Hall New York

Image taken from the Carnegie Hall website

In honour of the centenary of the birth of perhaps the greatest violinist ever to grace the stage of Carnegie Hall, Isaac Stern, one of our greatest violinists today, the imperious Maxim Vengerov, played a concert of some merit with his piano playing partner, the Russian wunderkind Polina Osetinskaya.  The programme had no hint of Russian music, not even in the four encores and perhaps that is why the evening didn’t really take off until the very end. 

There is no doubt that Vengerov is at the pinnacle of a crop of wonderful violin players around today and he did not disappoint with his ability and the sound that he achieved from his 1727 ex-Kreutzer Stradivari violin.  The pianist Osetinskaya was also proficiently adept, but never with an ounce of the required aggression that might draw her violinist partner into engaging with her throughout a fairly dull programme.  Everything went well with two great artists, but nothing became challenging nor thrilling in the four piece programme that they presented.  Neither Schubert’s Fantasy nor Mozart’s Violin Sonata in B flat nor Strauss’s Violin Sonata in E Major were played at anything other than by rote.  There was no ‘Ping’ to the evening and only the Ravel piece Tzigane had enough spirit to lift the mood between these two great artists. 

And so to the encores.  There was the Brahms Hungarian Dance and Kreisler’s Liebesleid and Liebesfreud, which were played as if listening to the café music in St Mark’s Square in Venice.  No better!  And then the last of the encores, when perhaps the audience had taken the view that ‘enough was enough’, the duo played Massenet’s Meditation from the opera Thais.  Those left in the auditorium were held in awe for the next five minutes or so and by the time Vengerov played his last top note floating to the rafters, an electric atmosphere had at last arrived in the hall.  The audience exploded, recognising that they were in the presence of a true master that had played all evening without the need for a score.  At last the audience could head home with a real smile on their faces.