Maxim Vengerov spends September 23 and 24 in Bucharest for the city’s annual George Enescu Festival, celebrating the Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conductor, and teacher. Like the festival’s namesake, Maxim is heard in a plurality of contexts, serving as both conductor of and soloist for the Bucharest Virtuosi Orchestra.

On September 23, Maxim leads an all-Mozart program in which he can be heard as soloist for the composer’s Violin Concertos Nos. 3 and 5 in addition to his Symphony No. 40. On September 24, he joins fellow violinist Vlad Stanculeasa for Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra in D Minor before reprising September 23’s program.

Olga Borodina’s fall season continues with a jubilee concert in her hometown at the Mariinsky Theatre, celebrating the legendary mezzo-soprano’s 50^th birthday. Heard earlier this year at the gala opening of Mariinsky II in what the New York Times dubbed “a melting, genuinely seductive performance of ‘Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix,’” Olga returns to the theater’s main auditorium on September 22.

Joined by the Mariinsky Chorus and Orchestra with conductor Tugan Sokhiev, Olga will be featured in a program that includes Act I from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Act II from Borodin’s Prince Igor, and Act IV of Bizet’s Carmen. 

Reuniting with recital partner Itamar Golan, Maxim Vengerov gives two performances this week in St. Emilion (September 17) and Basel (September 19). The pair reprise their program of violin sonatas by Beethoven, Schubert, and Franck, as well as Saint-Saëns’s Havanaise and Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso.

Vengerov’s recitals with Golan on piano have been heard this summer in Bordeaux and Illinois. Of an earlier program given at the Barbican this February that featured many of the same works, the Independent wrote: “Golan’s velvet touch became the ideal foil for Vengerov’s intimate and confiding sound.”

This week, Maxim Vengerov guests with the Polish Baltic Symphony Orchestra as part of the Vengerov Festival in Gdansk. The Orchestra’s season-opening concert, heard on September 12 at the Filharmonie Gdansk, features Maxim performing Britten’s Violin Concerto—in the composer’s centennial year—under the baton of Ernst van Tiel. Maxim previously performed the concerto this summer at the Ravinia Festival (in a highly-anticipated and much-lauded return to the United States), of which performance the Chicago Tribune wrote: “Given performances as vital as this, Britten’s shamefully neglected concerto will not languish in obscurity much longer.”

Maxim Vengerov’s fall season begins with the Vengerov Festival, a series of concerts and masterclasses. Last experienced in June in Tokyo, the Vengerov Festival travels to Gdansk, a Polish city on the Baltic coast. As part of the public activities, Vengerov will give a concert with the International Menuhin Orchestra at the Polish Philharmonic Gdansk on September 8. The concert will feature Maxim as both violinist and conductor with Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5.

On September 12, Vengerov joins the Polish Baltic Symphony Orchestra for their season-opening concert at the same concert hall. Under conductor Ernst van Tiel, he will perform Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto (a work he previously played this summer at the Ravinia Festival to great acclaim). The program will also include Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.