The main event came Friday in Abravanel Hall, where the extraordinarily communicative violinist played the Berg Violin Concerto with the Utah Symphony and music director Thierry Fischer. From her stealth entrance (barefoot, as members of the string sections played a gentle waltz that set up the concerto perfectly) to her invitation for concertmaster Madeline Adkins to join her in an encore by 17th-century composer Orlando Gibbons, everything about Kopatchinskaja’s performance was unconventional but indisputably musical.
The concerto, written in response to the death of the composer’s young friend from polio, is a work of melancholy beauty, though it also gave Kopatchinskaja a chance to show off some fearsome technical skills.