The music of the Polish-born Russian composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg - little heard or thought of since his death in 1996 - seems to be on the verge of a rediscovery. His opera "The Passenger" just wound up a revival at the Houston Grand Opera, a recording project of his complete piano music is under way, and on Sunday night, violinist Gidon Kremer and his chamber orchestra Kremerata Baltica devoted half of their Davies Symphony Hall concert to Weinberg's music.

Not that it was easy to draw any obvious conclusions from the program, presented by the San Francisco Symphony as part of the Great Performers Series. The two pieces performed were so different in outlook and tone that they seemed to thwart any attempt to get a clear picture of Weinberg's style (a third piece, music for the cartoon "Bonifatsy's Holidays," served as an encore).

What was clear, though already well known, was the extent of Shostakovich's influence on Weinberg, who formed a lifelong friendship with the older composer after immigrating to the Soviet Union from Warsaw in 1939. Many of Weinberg's thumbprints, including a tart harmonic palette and a formal approach that draws heavily but selectively on traditional structures, are reminiscent of Shostakovich.

Yet Weinberg's Tenth Symphony from 1968, which occupied much of the second half of Sunday's concert, proved to be a difficult sell (the piece was a last-minute substitution after bass Alexei Mochalov, who had been scheduled to perform Shostakovich's "Anti-Formalist Gallery," withdrew following the sudden death of his wife). Cast in five movements, the piece adopts a resolutely abrasive tone, bristling with dissonances that spin out at length without ever making much of a rhetorical case.

The symphony begins as almost a Shostakovich knockoff, with repetitive themes of seesawing fourths over the grimly inexorable tread of a walking bass line. By the time this material returns 35 minutes later to wrap the piece up, Weinberg has treated us to a variety of densely gnarled harmonies and a long series of anguished cadenzas for the various string principals. If there is a dramatic or expressive point behind the symphony's relentlessly gritty writing, it was not especially apparent on a single hearing - despite an impassioned and committed rendition by the orchestra.

By contrast, Weinberg's sweet-toned Concertino for Violin and Strings, with Kremer as the graceful, light-footed soloist, sounded like spun sugar - a compilation of ingratiating melodies that unfold with impeccable balance. Under other circumstances I can imagine that the piece would cloy a bit; after the grinding asperities of the Tenth Symphony, it sounded like pure balm.

The first half of the program was a showcase for both Kremer and his orchestra, which draws young string players from throughout Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Shostakovich's Violin Sonata, in Michael Zinman's arrangement for strings with an added percussion part by Andrei Pushkarev, elicited a vibrant and finely blended performance marked by well-judged interplay between Kremer and the orchestra. And Britten's precocious "Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge" found the orchestra playing with fervor and tonal allure.
