Nervous? What for?

Violinist Jennifer Frautschi is still referred to as a “young artist,” though she’s turning 30 in June. The tag was applicable, she observes, when she performed solo at the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “High School Night” at age 16 -- and, to her amusement, it has stuck.

Since then, the Pasadena native has parlayed her studies (at the Colburn School for the Performing Arts and the USC Thornton School of Music, for starters) into a thriving professional career. She and her 1722 Stradivarius violin have appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, toured Belgium and Switzerland, drawn plaudits for a recording of Stravinsky and Ravel, and captured the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant -- previously awarded to Yo-Yo Ma and Joshua Bell.

On Friday, Frautschi returns to the Philharmonic, making her subscription concert debut playing Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto with conductor Pierre Boulez. “That piece is a mental and physical feat -- one that takes a steel-trap mind to memorize and play with confidence,” says her Colburn School teacher Robert Lipsett. “You can’t come back to town and do anything bigger than that.”

Why did you make the mountain so high, playing such a challenging piece in an evening that, I’m sure, looms large?

Boulez chose the program and was looking for a soloist. Though other pieces are more difficult to play, this one has a lot of layers requiring an intellectual rigor to understand. It’s very complicated, with a lot of depth -- a requiem for Manon Gropius, the 18-year-old daughter of the architect [Walter] and Alma Mahler. I’ve never performed it in concert before, but, oddly, I’m not nervous. Part of it is constitutional -- I love getting on stage and performing. Part is that I’m playing one of the most beautiful and substantive pieces in the violin repertoire with one of the great conductor-composers of the 20th century. I’m very excited.

The violin is said to be the most difficult instrument, requiring tremendous sensitivity and coordination.

That’s what they say. But, on an intellectual level, playing the piano is much harder. There’s a great body of repertoire written for the piano alone in which the pianist has to supply everything. Violinists do very little on our own. Though I play solo, I’m usually accompanied by piano or orchestra or some kind of ensemble. On the other hand, we do have to play a lot of notes, fast and high, and adjust the pitch ourselves. On the piano, the pitch is set -- you hit a key and a sound comes out.

You’ve been praised for your passionate interpretations, which, people say, are generally devoid of excess. How do you walk that line?

When I play, I have a split personality -- I’m in myself, but there’s also an element of me in the audience. I imagine a tiny person in the back of the hall and modify my performance accordingly. “Am I balanced with the orchestra?” I ask. “Could I be playing softer?” If I only listen to that voice, I’d become guarded. But if I ignore it, I could get carried away or self-absorbed. Basically, I’m not a self-conscious person or performer. I could use a little more of that perspective, I suppose.

Is playing on a Stradivarius all it’s cracked up to be?

If people in the audience heard me, on different weeks, playing on a modern instrument or a Strad, they probably wouldn’t hear the difference. I, myself, have been fooled. It’s more about how it feels as a performer, the ease of achieving what you want. With a Strad, everything you want to do just happens. Not by itself -- you have to will it. With a lesser instrument, you have to struggle, to varying degrees. You’re not encouraged to explore a variety of sounds because you can’t produce them. My instrument has helped me to grow as an artist. Of course, an instrument of that caliber is unaffordable for normal folks. I was lucky. I located a foundation, which shall remain anonymous, that offered to buy me one.

One critic, noting the glamorous, shoulder-baring photo on the cover of your CD, compared you with musicians Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Anne-Sophie Mutter, whom, he said, “exude sensuality and aren’t afraid to show it.”

I never tried to play the glamour card. But, I suppose, looks help in this business. In this visually oriented culture, everything is “packaging.” I actually disliked that picture. I was in my mid-20s when it was taken and I thought it made me look like a middle-aged soap star -- a 35-year-old “Days of Our Lives” actress.

-- Elaine Dutka