In 1996, I went to a San Fran­cisco Sym­phony con­cert with a good friend. The pro­gram was gen­er­ally typ­i­cal of orches­tra con­certs around the world; an over­ture, a con­certo, inter­mis­sion, a sym­phony. In the details, how­ever, lay the bril­liance of Michael Tilson Thomas’ musi­cian­ship, atti­tude and sales­man­ship (a vtial tal­ent for a music direc­tor): Rossini’s “Over­ture to Semi­ramide;” the Haydn Cello Con­certo in D, played by Lynn Har­rell; and John Adams’ Har­monielehre. Before the music began I over­heard peope in the seats behind us talk­ing about the music, express­ing their unfa­mil­iar­ity with Adams and won­der­ing why the mod­ern piece was placed after inter­mis­sion, when surely many peo­ple would leave so they wouldn’t have to endure a piece younger than they were.

The music on the first half was despatched with verve and charm, and the curi­ous cou­ple behind us decided to stay for the whole show. They had no idea what they were in store for. This was a tremen­dous per­for­mance of a great piece of music, and from the very first, crush­ing E minor chord, the orches­tra played with fero­cious inten­sity. The ova­tion at the end was one of the most pas­sion­ate I’ve wit­nessed, and Adams came out for four stand­ing ova­tions. Leav­ing the hall, the same cou­ple talked excit­edly about how that was the great­est con­cert they had ever seen. I don’t doubt it.

Har­monielehre is a stan­dard of the orches­tral reper­toire, and a mas­ter­piece. The San Fran­cisco Sym­phony com­mis­sioned it, pre­miered it and made the first record­ing, and excel­lent one that has not been equalled by per­for­mances led by Simon Rat­tle and David Robert­son. It was sur­passed that night, though, and that night has now been sur­passed by a new release from the Symphony’s own label, live per­for­mances of the sym­phony and the fan­fare “Short Ride in a Fast Machine,” recorded in Davies Sym­phony Hall in Decem­ber 2010 and Sep­tem­ber 2011.

The com­po­si­tion speaks for itself. It’s an impor­tant work, one that found a way to com­bine Min­i­mal­ist process with Roman­tic res­o­lu­tion and express itself with imme­di­ate, and pro­found, emo­tional and intel­lec­tual power. It belongs explic­itly inside the his­tory of west­ern clas­si­cal music, with its bits of Mahler and Sibelius, but it’s not stodgy, and even though it’s a gen­er­a­tion old it sounds new every time because it updates the past and shows a new way for­ward, but there’s noth­ing off-putting or for­bid­ding about it, in the clichéd man­ner that had the patrons wary about what to expect. One of Adams’ finest qual­i­ties is that he wears his intel­lec­tual and learn­ing lightly. It’s always in the con­text of his pieces, but he com­mu­ni­cates that sub­stance with such direct and sin­cere power that any­one and every­one can accept what they’re hear­ing with­out feel­ing alien­ated or patronized.

The play­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion of MTT and the orches­tra on this record­ing are of the high­est level. I write this in Brook­lyn, and from the East Coast per­spec­tive, with maybe one visit a year and a slow trickle of record­ings on their own label, it’s easy to over­look that this con­tin­ues to be the finest orches­tra in the coun­try. They play with the utmost refine­ment, flex­i­bil­ity and musi­cal­ity, and bear the conductor’s per­sonal stamp of color and power. They’ve already pro­duced the finest Mahler cycle on record and a series of aston­ish­ingly accom­plished CDs in tan­dem with their excel­lent Keep­ing Score series. In the SACD for­mat, their record­ings are the finest engi­neered clas­si­cal discs I have ever heard; the sound has weight, res­o­nance yet sac­ri­fices no detail, and the place­ment of the audio field puts the lis­tener at and slightly above the podium, and at vol­ume that is excit­ing. The music-making on this disc is force­ful, sweep­ing, joy­ful. Har­monielehre is deep, humane music, matched here by the vis­ceral and empathic play­ing. This will be one of the finest releases of 2012. Adams’ com­po­si­tion is an essen­tial part of any music library, and now this is the essen­tial record­ing of it.