Maxim Vengerov plays Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Antonio Pappano, before Shostakovich’s Eighth, written in 1943.
The Russian violinist Maxim Vengerov plays Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre in the Barbican on Sunday 21 February 2027. Sir Antonio Pappano conducts.
Vengerov was born in Novosibirsk in 1974, the only child of an oboist and a children’s choir director. He began the violin at five, and at ten he won the Wieniawski and Lipiński young violinists’ competition.
He studied with Zakhar Bron, following his teacher from the Soviet Union to the Royal Academy of Music in London and then to Lübeck. His win at the Carl Flesch International Competition in 1990 brought him a recording contract.
Pappano was music director of the Royal Opera House from 2002 to 2024, the longest tenure in its history. He became chief conductor of the LSO in 2024, succeeding Sir Simon Rattle. Vengerov joins the orchestra again on its American tour later the same month, with the cellist Alisa Weilerstein.
Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony follows the concerto. He composed it in 1943, during the Battle of Stalingrad, as a reflection on war and on suffering under totalitarian rule, and it runs to more than an hour.