"A drop-dead virtuoso," said the Los Angeles Times. "A violinist like him only visits once every hundred years," wrote a trade magazine. "He's not a violin, he's a violin," said one of his acquaintances recently. 'Ein Gott gedebenes Talent', sighed Viktor Liberman, former concertmaster of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, during a performance by Vengerov.

He has been compared to Jascha Heifetz, God on earth for violinists, and to David Oistrach, another legendary violinist. He has performed with the most famous orchestras and conductors of name such as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim and Mstislav Rostropovich. The list of prizes he has won all over the world is long. "I can't get enough success and prizes, it's a way of making it clear to me that people appreciate me. My art, what I do.", is what he said as just a little kid. At 5 years old he gave a half-hour concert, Paganini, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Schubert. He was a true prodigy.

Vengerov has managed to bring out his peers and young adults even, into the concert halls. He organizes series of carte blanche concerts in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and succeeds in what pop groups and rock festivals can hardly achieve: drawing packed halls. He isn't very interested in the discussion about the relevance of classical music and attracting a younger audience. "Give the audience time to get to know my music," he says.