Russian-born violinist Maxim Vengerov – still in his early forties and long recovered from a shoulder injury that stopped him from playing for five years – has been a welcome visitor to Australia since 1999. That year, in Melbourne, he gave a brilliant recital and also performed the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under Markus Stenz. Sixteen years later he returned; his recital featured a mesmeric reading of the Chaconne from Bach’s Partita No. 2.

Two weeks ago he opened the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s 2017 season with a rendition of Brahms’s Violin Concerto that was memorable from the first movement, when Vengerov replaced Joseph Joachim’s wonted cadenza with his own longer, Bachian cadenza.