Short Ride in a Fast Machine, a showpiece for large orchestra, was written for the Great Woods Festival at Mansfield, Massachusetts, and premiered by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
Performer Biography
Peter Oundjian, the conductor, has been Musical Director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra since 2004 and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra since 2012.
Compositional Technique
The first movement of Harmonielehre opens and closes with explosively animated E minor chords, a gesture suggested by a surreal dream John Adams experienced.
Composition History
John Adams's Harmonielehre was inspired in part by dreams and by his general interest in the writings of Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.
Compositional Technique
The finale of Harmonielehre, titled 'Meister Eckhardt and Quackie', derives from a dream John Adams had of his infant daughter riding on the shoulder of the Medieval mystic, Meister Eckhardt.
Composer Biography
John Adams, the composer, has consistently tackled contemporary and often controversial subjects in his operas, such as the making of a modern political myth and international terrorism.
Composer's Artistic Vision
John Adams described Short Ride in a Fast Machine as suggesting the sensation of traveling in a high-performance sports car and regretting the decision to have gotten in.
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