It's one of those hoary musical anecdotes, to be taken with salt. A society hostess invited the great violinist Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962) to a dinner party. "Of course you'll bring your violin?" added the hostess, as offhandedly as she could. "I'm sorry, madam," Kreisler replied, "but my violin never dines out."

Why recount this old yarn now? Because Kreisler's 1741 Guarneri del Gésu, the violin that never dined out, has been touring Twin Cities neighborhood venues for the past week, in the company of the remarkable Danish-born violinist-conductor Nikolaj Znaider and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. (As is the norm these days, the instrument isn't his; it's on loan from a pair of Danish foundations.) It sounded glorious when I caught up with it in Minneapolis last Thursday -- but it was not the center of attention.

Son of a Danish mother and a Polish-Israeli father, Znaider, 33, dominates a room without playing a note. A martial-arts practitioner, he stands 6 feet 3 inches tall, and atop the podium at Temple Israel he looked as intimidating as any football linebacker. Yet in Mozart's melody-strewn "Turkish" Violin Concerto he played caressingly, with extraordinary elegance and delicacy of line. Temperate in his application of vibrato (the continuous use of which was one of Kreisler's innovations), Znaider drew a rainbow of hues from his storied instrument; the richness of its lower register was especially striking. The orchestra, though often left to its own devices, partnered him unerringly.

It would be wholly understandable if so fine a violinist, and so young a man, were a less than overwhelming conductor. But no apologies need be made for Znaider's leadership of the SPCO. From the explosive opening chords of Beethoven's "Coriolan" Overture to the lithe, lightning-fast finale of his Fourth Symphony (its daunting bassoon licks impeccably dispatched by principal Charles Ullery), Znaider joined energy and songfulness. The low strings, which struggle to be heard at the Ordway, were gratifyingly present. And the space at Temple Israel, which puts much of the audience in close proximity to the musicians, helped make this an uncommonly involving performance, with an immediacy seldom achievable in a larger hall.

Znaider's two overlapping programs -- this week's adds Stravinsky's Concerto in D and exchanges the Fourth Symphony for the Seventh -- look forward to the orchestra's December tour of Scandinavia, with Kreisler's fiddle presumably in tow.

Larry Fuchsberg writes frequently about music.