Stradical, Dude!

Legendary performers usually become legendary over time. In the case of Maxim Vengerov, the Siberian sensation who plays a violin recital tonight in Costa Mesa, the process has seemed virtually instantaneous. After all, he’s 22.

Yet the stuff legends are made of precedes him wherever he goes and suffers not at all in the retelling. Not only is he covered by local dailies and such music magazines as Gramophone (which called his recording of Prokofiev and Shostakovich concertos its 1995 record of the year), but also People magazine ran a full-page photo of him chalking his pool cue. “Maxim Exposure” blared Vogue Magazine.

Why not? He’s photogenic; he’s charming, and he’s a drop-dead virtuoso.

The legends started right off the bat: At his first public recital, when he was 5, he became so excited that he ended up taking his bows backward, facing the piano. Later, in an effort to attract members of an even younger, more extreme generation to classical music, he leaped off a mountain in a hang glider for Swiss television, playing his multimillion-dollar Stradivarius in midair.

Here’s a sampling of other stories making the rounds, with elaborations including Vengerov’s own comments as made during a recent interview by cellular phone from a succession of locations in Amsterdam--in his car, on a street corner and in a hallway on his way to his next appointment:

* That even as a young child, he often practiced until 4 a.m.

“My mom was very busy preparing for her own concerts,” Vengerov said. His mother was conductor of the children’s choir in Novosibirsk, capital of Western Siberia; his father was an oboist in the city’s orchestra.

“[Yet] my teacher insisted that my mother work with me,” Vengerov continued, and the only hours they had together were at night. He continued to practice after she went to bed. “I lost two years of childhood in one sense, but in the end I know it was so right.”

* That Vengerov, who emigrated to Israel with his family in 1990, now lives along Amsterdam’s most intense stretch of after-hours night-life and likes nothing better than a good game of pool:

“I am a night person,” he said. “I play eight ball, nine ball. I like not to lose too much. But losing with pride, this is even more beautiful.”

* That he stole last year’s Grammy Awards show, a program typically devoted to pop culture:

When Itzhak Perlman canceled his appearance at the Grammys because of an illness in his family, he recommended that Vengerov fill in for him. Vengerov’s gut- and string-busting performance of a concerto movement by Shostakovich reached a billion viewers.

What those viewers did not know was that Vengerov, immediately after a performance at Carnegie Hall, had shuttled between Milan and Los Angeles to satisfy rehearsal and performance schedules not only for the Grammys but also with his hometown orchestra on tour in Italy.

* That he was given the late Jascha Heifetz’s bow:

In 1987, Vengerov was scheduled to travel to Los Angeles to perform for Heifetz, but the Soviet government canceled the trip at the last minute. Heifetz died before he could hear Vengerov play. But Heifetz biographer Herbert Axelrod had been instructed by Heifetz “to give [the bow] to the right guy”--and Axelrod gave it to Vengerov after his New York recital debut.

* That a violinist like this comes along only once every 100 years (an assessment by the violin publication The Strad):

“Publicity is the thing which you can’t control,” Vengerov said.

“When I came to class with my first teacher, she gave me some work to go home and practice,” he recalled. “I went home with my mom, and I practiced very hard. I was 4. But when I came to class, I didn’t want to play. I found this lady a little too aggressive. I refused to play, once, then three times. [The teacher] said ‘If he’s going to continue like this, I can’t help you.’

“My mom wanted so much that I study violin, she started to cry. She had tears in her eyes, and I was very sorry for my mom. I said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll play.’

“Every time we went, the teacher gave me another work, another work, and by lesson No. 4 I had 18 songs by heart. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘he was born with the violin.’

“So maybe that’s a little exaggerated.”

* Maxim Vengerov will play sonatas by Elgar and Mozart, selections by Tchaikovsky and encores to be announced from the stage at 8 p.m. today at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $16-$34. (714) 556-2787.