Two years ago news broke that one of the greatest performers of our time, Maxim Vengerov, was to put away his ‘Kreutzer’ Stradivari and take a break from the classical platform. After more than a decade of hectic schedules, with around a hundred concerts each year, not to mention teaching, recording and press commitments, he would broaden his musical horizons, initially turning his attention to jazz improvisation at the Didier Lockwood Music Centre just outside Paris, before learning how to dance the tango. In short, at the age of 30, the Russian-trained violinist wanted time out. And who could blame him? Having scheduled his sabbatical nearly nine years beforehand, he had more than earned himself the break.

But as the results of Vengerov’s ‘gap year’ now come to light, it’s clear that it wasn’t just about giving classical repertoire a rest. In addition to the 45 concerts he gave in 2005, Vengerov recorded the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra and gave Classical music, in the stricter sense of the word, his closest attention, gathering together the UBS Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra to record Mozart’s second and fourth violin concertos and the Sinfonia concertante, with violist Lawrence Power, for EMI. The Mozart disc is due for release in February 2007 (sic, actually is March) and is the outcome of Vengerov’s most intensive periods of musicological scrutiny.

It’s a small wonder, then, that during the course of our interview beneath the apparently real palms of an airy London hotel, all roads, in Vengerov’s mind, lead to Mozart – from his childhood ambition to become a rock star (‘but then I discovered Mozart’) to his studies of Bach with Trevor Pinnock (‘we could not have had Mozart without the Baroque style’). He points out that even his lessons in jazz improvisation with Didier Lockwood have informed his understanding of Mozart’s improvisando style. But as the violinist continues to talk – his accent thick with the sounds of his Russian past – it becomes clear that he is not here just to promote his disc: his sabbatical year has really made him think.

‘I had worked with Mozart for quite some time, but even though I had read his scores, I hadn’t really looked at them in detail’, he explains. ‘Before this recording. I would just enjoy the genius of Mozart’s work, but as with the great composers such as Bach, you can read Mozart on a number of levels.’ According to Vengerov, his reflex response to these concertos is simply one of enjoyment – taking in their harmonies and dramatic impact, for example. The second ‘level’ of interpretation involves studying the scores in detail, and researching beyond them. ‘And the last level’, he explains, ‘is one of enlightenment, when you know it all (or as much as you can) and you say “Blow the score lets create something naturally.”’

Driving Vengerov’s thorough process of interpretation of the Mozart concertos is the UBS Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra – a collection of musicians who have been plucked from the festival’s leading young players. Having worked with the greatest orchestras of our time, Vengerov has no shortage of world-class collaborators to choose from. But young performers, he says, more readily grasp the youthful essence of Mozart’s violin concertos, penned when the composer had yet to grow out of his teens. ‘Of course I could have taken any big experienced orchestra, but I felt that collaborating with young players would allow me to work hard at getting as close as possible to what Mozart really means to us all,’ explains Vengerov. ‘The youngest player in this orchestra is 18 and the oldest is me, aged 32, so we fit with Mozart’s spirit.’

There’s no doubt that a youthful spirit is essential when it comes to interpreting youthful works, but Mozart’s concertos – even the simpler ones - are hardly child’s play. Indeed, it was Anne-Sophie Mutter who, after recently recording the complete concertos, lamented the current dearth of good, young Mozart players. Is he inclined to agree that with maturity comes a deeper understanding of Mozart’s style? ‘It has been said that Mozart is too easy for the young and too difficult of older players,’ says Vengerov. ‘I don’t believe that; for me, Mozart is rather simple. With all of Mozart’s violin concertos we can only talk about the young Mozart – about his potential as a composer – and young players intuitively and energetically grasp the essence of his work.’

But still, concedes Vengerov, there is still a lot more to Mozart than he had at first imagined. He had planned to bring out the disc in time for the composer’s anniversary celebrations last year, but felt the need to inhabit the works a little longer, taking the orchestra to an Israeli kibbutz on the Jordanian border to rehearse them more thoroughly. ‘When I started working with the orchestra I found there was much more to this material than I had initially thought,’ he confides. ‘The most amazing thing in Mozart’s music is the vibration – his harmony is very simple, yet it can travel from mood to mood like a roller-coaster. In order to capture the way in which his moods travel, or the magic of a key, every player has to use the same vibrato, speed and pressure of the bow, the same emotions – you have to think the same, and use the same vibrations of the soul.’

Mozart is just one area of repertoire that was nurtured during Vengerov’s sabbatical year. The hotel where we sit is just across the road from the BBC’s central London headquarters, where he has been in talks about his involvement in the 2007 BBC Proms. Under discussion is Russian composer Benjamin Yusupov’s Viola Tango Rock Concerto, a work written for a soloist alternating between viola and 5-string electric violin that Vengerov premiered in Hanover during his sabbatical year. It requires the performer to play both instruments with rock-styled amplification in a variety of different styles – from Baroque and Romantic to modern – and to improvisand dance tango. ‘I’m really hoping they’ll want it for the Proms, but we’ll see,’ says Vengerov. ‘Nothing has been decided yet.’

Vengerov’s interest in Yusupov’s work, and his commitment to learning tango with dancer Biljana Lipic, founder of the London’s Tangolab theatre group, was one of the greatest challenges of Vengerov’s long awaited sabbatical year. ‘You can’t study tango in 20 days – it takes forever – but it was enough time to learn the moves that I could put into the tango choreography.’ In order to cope with the improvisatory passages of the work, he also took improvisation classes with Didier Lockwood, a former collaborator with Stephane Grappelli. Vengerov recalls the lessons with a look of astonishment. ‘I always thought I had a fantastic rhythm,’ he says, ‘but when Didier asked me to tap my foot at the same time as playing, I realised I just couldn’t do it. Trust me, it’s a nightmare – like basic training in the army.’

Of course, Vengerov is not the first violinist to make the lead from virtuoso repertoire to improvisatory jazz. In recent years Victoria Mullova has been won over to jazz by her husband, cellist Matthew Barley. Nigel Kennedy, too, tours regularly with his jazz quintet, following his recent Blue Note Sessions recording on the Blue Note jazz label. Clearly today’s virtuosos are finding a level of freedom in jazz that is absent from their intensive training and presents a refreshing contrast, perhaps, to the formalities and interactive rigours of classical concert-giving. But unlike Kennedy, Vengerov dismisses any aspirations to be taken seriously in the jazz world. ‘I don’t want to be a jazz violinist,’ asserts Vengerov. ‘My home is [classical] violin – it’s my mother tongue, my language - but sometimes I like to be naughty and do something else just for the sake of doing it.’

The truth is Vengerov has never stopped exploring new musical horizons, whether learning the viola to record Walton’s Viola Concerto or period Baroque fiddle with Trevor Pinnock for a disc of Bach. ‘You always have to keep different interest alive,’ he says. But not all of Vengerov’s risks have paid off with the critics. Another EMI project to emerge from his sabbatical year is his recording of the Beethoven Concerto, performed under the baton of his closest mentor, Mstislav Rostropovich. Uncharacteristically, the performance was slammed, not least for its alarmingly slow tempo in the opening movement. But Vengerov defends his interpretation, which, he says, was the upshot of living with the piece for more than a decade before committing it to disc. ‘You have to be truthful to yourself,’ he explains. ‘For me Beethoven’s Violin Concerto is a vocal expression and if I was a singer, then I would need time to sing out the lyrical first movement. It’s the same with Mozart,’ he warns. ‘My tempos in some of the movements are a bit slower.’

Which brings us back to Vengerov’s reference points for Mozart’s style – how does he decide on his tempos for the Mozart? ‘Whether you are dealing with his quartets or orchestral music, an element of opera is always reflected in his instrumental works,’ he asserts. ‘Before I start playing, I try to sing the melody and then I pick up the violin.’ Another useful reference for interpreting the concertos is Leopold Mozart’s Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing, which, written in the year of Mozart’s birth, sheds light on the composer’s Italianate style and ornamentation. ‘The Leopold Mozart School gives you insights into the technique and embellishment – what sort of sound constitutes a sostenuto and what a dot or a dash means,’ he explains. Vengerov had even considered performing the pieces on original instruments, but ultimately decided against it because of the demands it would make on the players in recording.

As Vengerov discussed the finer points of interpretation, is seems more likely that his irrepressible intellectual curiosity, as opposed to a specific love of Mozart, came between the young violinist and his dreams of becoming a rock star. Clean-cut and charmingly polite, he doesn’t appear the type to ‘rock out’. But there have been rumours in the past of the young Vengerov taking to the dressing room after his concert to slick back his hair, and don a leopard skin print shirt and Cuban heels before signing autographs for his adoring female fans. He must have enjoyed the wild successes and endless activity of the past decade, but has he ever had any misgivings about the more starry side of his lifestyle? ‘The travelling can be tiring.’ He admits. ‘Sometimes you just want to stay at home and relax. But then there’s a voice that says, “Come on, Maxim, stop sitting on the couch and do something!”’

When it comes to motivation, teaching is one area that continues to drive Vengerov’s quest for perfection. Ever since the age of 14, when he was studying in Lubeck, he has been called upon to give masterclasses. During his sabbatical year he was appointed visiting professor at London’s Royal Academy of Music, adding to his teaching commitment as professor of violin at the Saarland’s University of Music, Germany. At the same time as passing along the advice of those he has worked with – Rostropovich, Barenboim, Mehta, Abbado, Muti among them – Vengerov says he gets a lot out of the lessons he gives. In short, teaching is a valuable two-way process in which he never stops learning. ‘When I teach I will sometimes hit upon the right advice for a student that I can implement in my own performance,’ he explains. ‘I’m very curious person and I love the process of studying. I’d love to take a sabbatical every year. I can learn so much when I am only giving 60 concerts year.’

But whether Vengerov can continue to rein in his concert schedule remains to be seen. He plans to play just 60 concerts in 2007, creating more time to visit museums and art galleries, and to research his repertoire more thoroughly. Indeed he’s confident that he’ll find time in the coming months to get to grips with the Bach partitas and sonatas, which he’s been saving to record for more than a decade. In the future he wants to play more chamber music, and to make more time for Schubert – a composer he feels is underplayed. But before then he’ll be returning to the Mozart, recording the remaining concertos in 2008. ‘Sometimes it’s like being on a huge train – you put on the brakes but it just won’t stop,’ he explains. ‘In the end you have to tame yourself and remember the reason you go on stage is not only to enjoy the music but also to give the audience an opportunity to travel with you.’