The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra presented its newest Artistic Partner in a lively concert at Temple Israel Thursday night. This was the 37-year-old Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who has been billed in England and Europe as "the wild child of the violin" and "the most exciting violinist in the world."

This is hype, of course, from the fevered brain of a well-paid press agent well aware that the public loves the idea of the untutored genius, the gifted primitive, the unfettered free spirit. It's less interesting to hear about the hard work and determination — and luck — that go into the making of a brilliant performer. Kopatchinskaja entered the Vienna Academy at 17, where, for starters, she practiced four hours each morning.

Her career has been built largely in Europe. She made her U.S. debut last season with the Boston Philharmonic, an enterprising community orchestra, which means that Thursday night was her major-orchestra debut in this country. All management hype aside, she is a well-schooled but also gifted and charismatic musician. The Chamber Orchestra was wise to engage her. She is contracted here for three seasons — three programs each season.

Thursday's program, which leaned toward Eastern European folk idioms, offered some surprises. It had been announced that Kopatchinskaya would be joined by her parents, making their first U.S. appearance — her mother, Emilia, a violinist, and her father, Viktor, who plays the cimbalom, a large dulcimer associated with Hungarian folk music. Both are veteran members of the Moldovan state folk ensemble. An addition to their program was an encore, an arrangement that the orchestra had commissioned of Ravel's "Tzigane" with a part for cimbalom..

Kopatchinskaya plays with singular, at times almost brutal passion. Her opening selection, Mozart's Adagio and Fugue in C Minor, for which she joined the string ensemble, was vividly rhythmic, almost choppy, the players digging deep into their strings. Her own sound, though, is intense but not heavy. It has a light, silvery quality with a quick vibrato, a characteristic heard to best advantage in the seldom-played Mendelssohn D minor Violin Concerto (it's the one in E minor we usually hear). Her playing was free and flowing, quite exhilarating in its airy exuberance and exquisite, delicate high notes.

The dark and melancholy Concerto No. 2 for Violin and String Orchestra by the Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian, a work Kopatchinskaya recently recorded, offered strong contrast — intense, austere passages from the ensemble and wispy high-wire sections in the solo part. Just before intermission, the violinist joined the other string players in a thrusting and vigorous reading of Bartók's Romanian Folk Dances in the version for string orchestra.

Opening the second half, all three Kopatchinskayas cut loose on a set of folk dances, "Hora Staccato" being the most familiar. This is challenging, virtuosic stuff, and these players obviously have it in their blood. The audience stood and cheered at the end.

All told, this was an auspicious debut of a musician we'll obviously hear much about in the future. And in case anyone who's been reading about her wants to know: does Kopatchinskaya play barefoot? Yes. Walking on and offstage, she wore slippers, then stepped out of them when she played.

Michael Anthony is the former music critic of the Star Tribune