REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK:

Child violin prodigy turned international superstar Sarah Chang came to Costa Mesa to give a visually flamboyant yet musically nuanced performance with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra on Thursday night.

Wearing a bright red sequined dress and tall red stilettos Chang danced around the stage as she gave a virtuosic rendition of Brahm’s Violin Concerto in D Major. At one point, with a flourish of her bow as she finished a dramatic phrase, she staggered backward and looked to be inches from knocking over the violinist sitting behind her.

Despite the physical undulations, the music was not saccharine or melodramatic. Her rich melodic lines, filled with vibrato, wept and raged with the thick, singing lines characteristic of the composer’s style.

In softer passages she played with a sublimely ethereal touch that floated over the orchestra.

Adept technique allowed Chang to play the booming, regal third movement without departing from the rhythmic structure so important to the section’s triumphant theme. Such was the case in the first- movement cadenza where she played the blisteringly fast runs leading up to the end without slowing, building the energy up to the final note.

The appetizer for the main act was two selections from Richard Strauss. The first, an oddly orchestrated concertino, featured the Pacific Symphony’s principal clarinetist, Benjamin Lulich, and principal bassoonist, Rose Corrigan accompanied by only the soft fabric of light strings.

The small orchestra almost makes the piece seem baroque even though it was written after WWII. The acidic clarinet lines cut through the soft string harmonies while the bassoon’s mellow timbre blended and was occasionally obscured by the orchestra.

Then the audience was returned to the large orchestration, complete with drums and horns, often used by Strauss and his 20th-century contemporaries like Mahler in a suite of excerpts from the composer’s opera “Der Rosenkavalier.” Conductor Carl St. Clair, in his typically animated style, danced around on the podium, legs in the air, during the festive waltz sections.

Chang will return for her third and last performance tonight at 8.

Reporter ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at [email protected].