Violinist Nikolaj Znaider

Violinist Nikolaj Znaider impressed as the Milwaukee Symphony‘s guest soloist in Carl Nielsen’s Violin Concerto in February of 2004 and Mendelssohn’s Concerto No. 1 in May of 2007. He returns this weekend, to join music director Edo de Waart and the MSO in Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto in B minor.

“The quality of Elgar that attracts me is the contrast,” said Znaider, 34, in an interview Wednesday afternoon. “Grandeur coexists with intimacy. Passion coexists with restraint. You can feel those opposing forces.

“Elgar’s music calls for a sense of rubato, a freedom. There is not just room for flexibility, but a need for it. If one simply plays as written, it can become banal.”

If benign ghosts exist in music, Znaider will benefit in his performances of this 50-minute concerto. He will play it on the very same 1741 Guarnerius del Gesu violin (“The Kreisler”) that Fritz Kreisler,who commissioned the work, used to premiere it in 1910.

Znaider is Danish, but of Polish descent on both sides. His mother was born in Poland to immigrant parents. His father’s family left Poland for Israel, and his father subsequently moved to Denmark. His parents are not musicians, but he credits them for his career and approach to life.

“I was very fortunate with the parents I chose,” Znaider said. “They always encouraged me to be curious and question and not just take the easy way. They set the whole tone for how life developed. I knew at 17 that I was not where I wanted to be as a musician. The courage to realize this came very much from my upbringing.”

Znaider knew at age 8 that he would be a musician.

“You don’t choose music, music chooses you,” he said. “An 8-year-old does not understand the implications of such a career. For me, there was never a choice.”

Like most musicians, Znaider claims to change his expressive voice to meet the style of the music at hand and the intent of the composer. In the case of Elgar, he read the notations and pondered the enigmatic Spanish notation in the score: “Aqui está encerrada el alma de …..” (“Herein is enshrined the soul of …..”). He has also listened to the 1932 Yehudi Menuhin recording, with Elgar conducting, though he never simply copy Menuhin. But he has absorbed all that background and is content to let it inform his own musical instincts whatever mysterious ways.

Znaider could be more specific about the more general principles that guide him regardless of what he might be playing:

“I believe in the dictum of Isaac Stern, to use the violin to play music and not to use music to play the violin.

“And yet, I come from that tradition — and Isaac Stern is a part of it — that treated the violin as a singing instrument. I hear it as a voice, and I think sometimes that might be a little lost in the modern way of violin playing.”

Music director Edo de Waart will conduct this substantial program, which also includes Faure’s Requiem, featuring the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, soprano Kiri Deonarine and baritone Kim Josephson.

Concert time is 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Jan. 22 and 23, at Marcus Center Uihlein Hall. Tickets are $25-$93 at the MSO website, at the MSO ticket line, 414-291-7605, and at the Marcus box office, 414-273-7206.

Znaider plays Bach’s Sarabande in D minor: