We all love a good Faustian pact legend, whether it’s Goethe’s original or bluesman Robert Johnson’s deal with a guitar-playing Devil at a crossroads in Georgia.

But Russian violinist Ilya Gringolts doesn’t need any satanic assistance to make his gut-stringed Guarneri del Gesù whizz and sing, as he showed when he directed the Australian Chamber Orchestra in a program built around Giuseppe Tartini’s formidable Devil’s Trill Sonata in G minor.

Ilya Gringolts and the Australian Chamber Orchestra: The Devil’s Violin. Photo © Charlie Kinross

ACO Artistic Director Richard Tognetti had to pull over to the side of the road when he first heard Gringolts playing Paganini on his car radio. That was 11 years ago and, after two sensational ACO tours in the interim, he is back for a third. The impact of his playing has in no way lessened.

Born in Leningrad 43 years ago, when it still bore that name, and trained by Itzhak Perlman at Juilliard, the Swiss-based virtuoso has built a reputation for being “a violinist’s violinist”.

He is equally at home with the Baroque, Romantic and...