In a program spanning two hundred years of violin playing – from Bach to Ravel via Beethoven, Ernst, Paganini, and Ysaÿe, with encores by Brahms and Massenet – Maxim Vengerov enthralled his Melbourne audience with incomparable musicianship and an often dazzling technique. Demonstrating his command of the repertoire with an engaging program, he played with stylistic appropriateness that showed he was equally at home in the baroque or classical as in the romantic – much of it in the virtuosic stratosphere – and the twentieth century.

Arts Update was present at Vengerov's sensational Melbourne début in October 1999. The Russian violinist was twenty-five at the time, but had already been performing for more than a decade. Vengerov went on his first international tour at the age of ten and won the International Carl Fleisch Competition in 1990. Much has happened to Vengerov since 1999. A professional crise and a serious shoulder injury, due to weight lifting, prompted his withdrawal from performances and a focus on conducting. Five years later he returned to the stage.