Patricia Kopatchinskaja brings bold ideas to SPCO

Patricia Kopatchinskaja has been called the most exciting violinist in the world. She's also a hugger.

After her first concert with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra last week as its newest artistic partner — during which she received three standing ovations — the Moldovan soloist, who had changed to a floor-length red dress for the second half of the performance, turned to embrace top-ranking fellow violinists Steven Copes and Ruggero Allifranchini, something classical concertgoers don't see every day.

With a repertoire spanning from Baroque to classical to modern masterworks, Kopatchinskaja is unconventionally earthy and exuberant in a milieu more prone to august reserve. It's easy to see why reviewers are prone to over-the-top description. "Wild child," "mad genius," "free thinker" and a "rebellious spirit" who "enjoys jolting audiences" are just a small sampling, and piled on top of one another they seem a heavy mantle to bear against future expectations. But PatKop, as she is affectionately nicknamed on her website, remains unfazed by the descriptions.

"I don't care," she said, her tone more circumspect than defiant during a post-rehearsal interview. "To be honest, I don't listen."

No matter the topic, Kopatchinskaja peppers her conversation with refreshing frankness. Asked what she hoped to accomplish with the SPCO, she said, "I never plan before I start something. I need to feel the situation, the energy of the other people. They are a fantastic orchestra that can play anything, so I'm lucky to be starting this three-year adventure."

Though Kopatchinskaja, 37, has directed pieces many times with various orchestras, the SPCO partnership is the first such multiple-year collaborative commitment she has made in her career.

"I am a soloist, the person who comes and goes and doesn't want to be influenced too much by other people," she said. "But at this point in my life, I want to find people who will share my way and who I will also learn from. Something very beautiful could happen between us."

"She's always exploring, not content to do things in any sort of standard way," said Copes. "The level of intensity with which she performs, how she's always in the moment, is pretty exceptional and takes a great deal of courage."

And about that hug?

"She's also very warm," he said.

Kopatchinskaja first picked up a violin at age 6. Unlike many virtuosi who achieve her status, however, she didn't grow up under constant pressure. Though her parents spent much of that time touring with the state folk ensemble before the fall of the Soviet Union, she says she had a quiet, normal childhood because she stayed with her grandparents in their small village in Moldova, a tiny republic tucked between Romania and Ukraine.

Her parents joined her onstage for last weekend's concerts, as they will again this weekend, treating audiences to the Eastern European folk music of their home region. Her mother is quite the deft fiddler herself and her father thrilled the opening-night audience with his rapid-fire playing of the exotic cimbalom.

"With my mature brain I understand what a treasure it is to still have them around. The other side is, like with every family, there are some topics you avoid."

Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" quartet is on the program for this weekend's concerts. Once again, Kopatchinskaja's approach will be to play it as it lays.

"It's poetic, and mysterious," she said. "We know it's about facing death, becoming friends with it. We might experiment a bit with echoes from older times, but we don't need to look around too much. We'll find the story in the music."

Her many awards included being named the Royal Philharmonic Society's Instrumentalist of the Year for outstanding live performances in the UK in 2013.

Her recordings on the Naïve Classique label include concerti by Bartók, Ligeti and Peter Eötvös with her Sinfonieorchester/Ensemble Modern, which won Gramophone's Recording of the Year in 2013 and was nominated for a 2014 Grammy. She recently toured Europe with quartet-lab, a string quartet she cofounded.

"It needs to become more human," she said of classical music. "The distance between the performers on stage and the audience is a bit absurd. We must talk to the audience, bring them our story like it's a fairy tale. And since we must play the same things again and again, we must every time try to make it different and interesting. We don't become better if we copy the visions of others hundreds of times."

In the SPCO rehearsal room, she is feeling tender toward her violin, an 1834 Pressenda, as it suffers from its own form of jet lag — ­being out of tune because "the climate changes as we travel and it doesn't know where it is right now."

"It's not a Strad," she said as she quickly tuned each string. "It's younger. It's as colorful as a violin can be, and open to any kind of sound."

She kicks off her boots and socks and launches into Bartók's lively "Romanian Folk Dances," drumming her bare heels in time on the wooden floor. (Her oft-remarked-upon preference for performing sans shoes might seem an affectation for someone else; but she does it so un-self-consciously that you believe her when she says it makes her feel grounded.)

"When I play Bartók, I become him. He is very close to how we Moldovans think, what we believe, the natural feel of dancing. I hope the audience will get up and dance."

"Folk music has functions," she said. "There are songs for dancing, funerals, weddings, lullabies, all have a purpose. We have made classical music too scientific. It needs to be like a bird, to go out in the world like a free soul and make its own experience with different musicians at different times."

She also has strong feelings about relying too much on conductors.

"You need one to inspire and give structure when the music is complicated, but the industry of conductors has become a little exaggerated. … Playing without one you become freer and also more responsible for what happens."

Her forthright ways sometimes meet with pushback from more conservative collaborators.

"I look younger and more naive than I am," she said. "I try to keep everything as open as possible and sometimes have to compromise. Very often men have a plan from the very beginning and women act more intuitively. We're different animals."

In her well-traveled violin case, Kopatchinskaja carries a weathered drawing the girl made for her a few years ago. On it are scribbled a smiling image of Mom, musical symbols and one large, abstract mystery shape.

"I asked her, 'What is that?' She said, 'I don't know. You will have to find out.' "

Like daughter, like mother.

Kristin Tillotson • 612-673-7046