Vengerov’s Instrument of Discovery : The Siberian violinist has flash and impeccable technique, but also fresh ear for music

Maxim Vengerov did not win a Grammy in February. The classical concerto prize was reserved for a mere superstar--Itzhak Perlman. But Vengerov walked away from the Shrine Auditorium with something a whole lot better. The astonishing 21-year-old violinist from Siberia won the night, the whole enchilada.

Which is to say that Vengerov, who can be heard in recital Sunday at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, came as close as anyone could to stealing the show. His performance of the last movement of Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto was a wild rush of virtuosity. Horsehair popped from his bow as notes flew in a spectacular rush. Vengerov was the only classical musician on the program Grammy night, and his standing ovation from the crowd--the pop world in all its colorful variety--was bigger than Coolio’s.

Vengerov, innocent that he still is, had figured he would be a classical-world mouse crushed by pop-music elephants. But he is losing that innocence fast enough, and he describes the experience as like being on drugs.

Caught in the lobby of his Manhattan hotel for a few minutes during his current whirlwind U.S. recital tour, Vengerov tells the Grammy story with great enthusiasm. And it turns out we didn’t know the half of it.

“I was preparing for a performance in Carnegie Hall with the Concertgebouw Orchestra,” Vengerov begins in solid English, “when somebody called me and said, ‘Grammys ask you to play.’ ” Perlman had canceled on short notice because of illness in his family. “So I said, wonderful, great, I would do it.”

The rehearsal had been set for three days later in Los Angeles, which happened to be the day Vengerov was supposed be in Milan, playing with his hometown orchestra from Novosibirsk, Siberia. Seven years had passed since the violinist had immigrated first to Israel and then to Amsterdam, where he now lives, and Vengerov had become the most celebrated violinist of his generation. But this was the orchestra he had given his first concert with, when he was 5, and this was to be a musical homecoming of sorts.

He proposed rehearsing a day earlier. He would then fly to Milan, play and turn right around and fly back to Los Angeles. No, he was told. It was rehearse on schedule or forget the Grammys.

“All of this,” Vengerov says, “was about a half hour before the Carnegie concert, and I was very upset. Everything was important.”

Reluctantly, he chose the Grammys.

Then, as he was leaving for Los Angeles, the phone rang. The awards show folks had changed their minds. Yes, he could rehearse a day early, as long as he conducted the movement himself from the violin, a nearly impossible task. He agreed without hesitation.

In the event, a substitute conductor was found, but Vengerov still had to fly to Milan, perform the day he arrived in Italy and return the next day to be on stage at the Shrine in time.

“It was,” he says, “crazy travel.”

But it was also in character with the way Vengerov has been taking the musical world by storm. His recording of that Shostakovich Concerto, and the first of Prokofiev, on Teldec (with Mstislav Rostropovich conducting), may have lost the Grammy, but it won a far more respected and coveted honor, Gramophone magazine’s record of the year, an extraordinary accomplishment for a musician of his age.

All the attention has come to Vengerov not for his flash or virtuosity--although he clearly has technique to burn--but for his musical authority, for his ability to find things fresh, important and deep in music that is terribly familiar. But Vengerov confesses that this ability to make music his own is no easy process. And he credits Zubin Mehta as having “really opened the world of music for me.”

Arriving in Israel, at age 16, as a hotshot virtuoso, Vengerov admits that he wasn’t exactly flexible in his musical thinking. And Mehta, music director of the Israel Philharmonic, had to loosen him up. “That’s what I had to learn from Zubin. And I couldn’t do it immediately. I had trouble communicating with other people. I was for 11 years with only two teachers. I was raised in a quite conservative way.”

Another conductor who had a tremendous impact on Vengerov around the same time was Daniel Barenboim, who had invited the violinist to play with the Chicago Symphony.

“I remember when I first played for him the Sibelius [concerto],” Vengerov says. “I had already spent quite a lot of time on it, and I was confident of my interpretation. But then when I played through it for him, his face was very pale. There was no reaction. By the third movement, he was quite angry.”

Barenboim told the young musician that it was all very beautiful and technically impeccable but that the performance had no character, no connection with the musical essence of the piece. Worse, Barenboim wouldn’t tell Vengerov what to do, only that he had to find the solution for himself.

“Well, unfortunately, he left me only one night to discover the interpretation of Sibelius,” Vengerov continues. “I didn’t sleep all night. I thought, how come I had such a great success with this piece? Everybody said I was wonderful. I thought I was quite good.

“So I tried to put myself on a different level, which was incredibly difficult in one night. You can imagine.

“He had said, ‘Look at the score and you will discover the interpretation.’ So I looked at the score, and in the beginning I didn’t see anything. Later, I went back to it and I was amazed. The next morning I went to the rehearsal, and he said, ‘Yes, that’s it.’

“Since I met Barenboim, there is no such thing as just playing the music. You have to rediscover the music. Every time it must be new. Every time, I open a new world for myself.”

* Celebrity Recital: Maxim Vengerov, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Sunday, 7:30 p.m. $8-$58. (213) 850-2000.