When the San Francisco Symphony commissioned Harmonielehre in 1985, it established John Adams as a composer of substance, negotiating his own space from the influences of the European classical and romantic traditions, American minimalism, and rock and jazz.

This new recording captures its unbridled potency, from the monochord fanfare through the enigmatic yearning reminiscent of Herrmann's Vertigo, to the resolution of the insistent strings and woodwind. The symphony is accompanied by the brief "Short Ride in a Fast Machine", written as a memory of Adams' terror while being driven in a Lamborghini.