I cannot recall a soloist in the Worthing Symphony Orchestra concerts down the decades who is cheered and whistled by some of the listeners onto the platform before he even plays a note. Even local guitar hero Richard Durrant was not greeted so brazenly before his Aranjuez appearance early this season.

WSO conductor John Gibbons has re-engaged him to appear next season with a violin concerto in the Youth Prom, where a number of concertgoers who attend no other in the season would be seeing Brovstsyn for the first time.

The orchestral players have realised for several seasons that Brovtsyn is special, and a crackle is in the air when he rehearses with them on the Sunday mornings in a near-empty Assembly Hall.

In performance, once he is on stage, he will greet and acknowledge the audience with bow upwards, in the same hand as the violin, and a nod of the head.

He will then stand, holding his 1862 Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume violin by the nut, below the scroll, at downwards arm's length. Always before his first entry, or after his opening statement, as in the Lalo Symphonie Espagnole this month, Brovtsyn turns towards the orchestra, away from the audience, almost whenever he is not playing, in order to listen intently to them, to connect, and to absorb himself in their sound, seeking to become one with the orchestra.

But in delivery, he will face the audience and sometimes put his right foot forward towards them but lean back, the weight on his right. As though about to unleash manually a weapon towards them.

He is only about 5ft 7in, and very broad across the shoulders, ample around the waist in that Russian way, and with a moon-shaped head, hair thinning early on top.

During performance he looks upwards at Gibbons to check readiness and to co-ordinate accents in his playing. Between movements, he produces a white handkerchief which, still folded he pats his brow, neck and cheeks. Sometimes he wears an unpretentious black shirt, thnis time he wore a jacket.

And the first bow he makes at the end is to his fellow players, before shaking hands with the string section leaders. Then he bows to the audience with a short bow of the head and a dipping forward of the shoulders. He will give short smiles and, after the Tchaikowsky last season and its exceptional reception from the crowd, he will touch his left breast.

Now 31, he is two months married, to a lithuanian violinist he met while leading Gidon Kremer's Chamber Orchestra, a hugely prestigious role. This was his sixth visit. Previously he played the Elgar concerto - a stunning Worthing debut - then came to play the Mendelssohn, the Brahms, the Beethoven, the Tchaikowsky, then this year the Lalo.

He is the son of piano soloist Dina Parakhina, who played the Grieg Concerto in September, and his stepfather is Yuri Torchinski, the leader of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, who last week played The Lark Ascending in a live broadcast with the orchestra from Manchester, and was also interviewed. And Torchinski played the Tchaikowsky concerto here a few seasons ago.

Boris' violin is a family heirloom since 1930. He entered Russia's famous Music School at age seven - a year after his first public appearance, which took place at the Bolshoi Theatre - and graduated 10 years later with a batchelor's degree. Thence to the Moscow State Tchaikowsky Conservatory and after five years a graduation with diploma. Then he studied in London at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

He has won major prizes in violin competitions., as well as performing all over Russia, its post-soviet independent states, and in western and central Europe, including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

This year, sudden snow accompanied his arrival at Worthing. It affected the whole of the south east and a number of the orchestra were in difficulties to reach the rehearsal. No one, however, had it tougher than tympanist Robert Millet.

A member of London Musici, he was accompanying Rambert Dance Company in Newcastle the previous evening and faced a drive afterwards back down to his London home. Snow had not fallen at that stage but he broke down near Northampton and had to be towed back.

Tympanists need vans. His was now out of action and he had to work out a way to get the three kettle drums he needed into his wife's car. And to that end he had to work out how to remove the seats. Rehearsal at Worthing next morning was at 10am.

He played the concert with just two hours' overnight sleep and confessed: "I wanted to stop and have a doze between the rehearsal and the performance but I thought it was more important that I went out and found something to eat."

With Tchaikowsky's Fourth Symphony due to round off the season at the end of the concert, he did not want it to leave the road because the drummer fell asleep at the wheel.