Violinist Elmar Oliveira isn't telling.

He owns both the "Stretton," a famous Guarneri del Gesu instrument made around 1729-31, and a 1993 replica by Curtin and Alf, but does not reveal which instrument he is using in a performance, until afterward — perhaps. Connoisseurs are welcome to lay their bets, but they will have to visit backstage for confirmation.

However much he loves his Guarneri, Oliveira stated, "I am a champion of contemporary violin makers. We have something of a renaissance of violin making happening ... with superb craftsmanship."

Besides, the focus ought to be the performance, not how old or how famous the instrument. The performer gives the violin its voice.

Featured soloist with the Honolulu Symphony, Oliveira ripped through Brahms' Violin Concerto Friday night with a voice both athletic and artistic, musical and masculine.

The Brahms Concerto may be gorgeous, but it is even more daunting. As Conductor JoAnn Falletta explained, "With Brahms, as much as the concerto is about the soloist, it's also always about the orchestra. It's a concerto for two mighty protagonists." It is a concerted conflict, the odds not helped by Brahms's heavy scoring.

To play the Concerto, Oliveira concurred, "you need a lot of energy, a lot of power, a lot of stamina, and yet, at the same time, you need a very lush and Romantic sound production."

The voice Oliveira gave his violin was not the floating, delicately sweet side of Romanticism; rather, his was focused and vigorous even while luxuriating among velvet melodies. He attacked fortissimo chords with ferocity, made lyric passages sing with focused energy, and wove in, out, among, and between the orchestra, drawing out meaning and passion. His concentration alone was awe-inspiring.

Not surprisingly for such a passionate performer, Oliveira shone in his transformed-and-transforming cadenza, and then more so with each movement, as Brahms moved from the serious, learned world of the first movement, through the tender second, to his ethnic roots in the last, his most heartfelt and inspired movement. In that final movement, Oliveira was practically burning bow strings.

Falletta opened the concert with Joan Tower's "Made in America," the result of a collaborative commission by 65 orchestras, at least one in every state. Between October 2005 and March 2007, there will be 80 performance across the nation, each one part of a "premiere" spread across time and space.

The idea is brilliant: it is a way for everyone — orchestras, audiences, composers — to win, a way for smaller orchestras to share in the commissioning of new works, which are often otherwise cost-prohibitive.

Based on "America the Beautiful," Tower's work opens by building from the quiet dark into an heroic climax before sliding into the main section, which passes through various challenges to return ever and again to the "America" theme, each time interpreted anew. Tower uses the orchestra less as an ensemble of individuals than as a single, mosaic whole, and the way she orchestrates is a delight to hear.

Although as yet unpolished, the Symphony's performance on Friday proved exciting, and the work, with its rhythmic energy and melodic counterpoint, seemed to offer the potential of becoming a favorite on both sides of the podium.

Falletta closed the concert with Strauss's "Rosenkavalier Suite," a work she clearly loves and conducted beautifully, movingly on Friday.

Essentially a 25-minute instrumental synopsis of the opera, the Suite sketched the Marschallin, "a woman of a certain age," graciously releasing her young lover to fall in love with a woman his own age.

Full of love duets, trios, and nostalgic waltzes, the music was, as Falletta described, a melancholy "goodbye to opportunities that will never come again." It built to a final, frenetic celebration, a last hurrah, for the Marschallin, yes, but also for the nineteenth century and Romantic music.

To a world immersed in world wars, expressionism, and serial music, "Rosenkavalier" was a bittersweet goodbye, indeed.

'OLD WORLD, NEW WORLD'

VIOLINIST ELMAR OLIVEIRA AND THE HONOLULU SYMPHONY

4 P.M. TODAY

BLAISDELL CONCERT HALL

$15 AND UP

792-2000, www.honolu lusymphony.com