John Adams (1947- ) is best known to us for his award-winning 1988 opera, Nixon in China. Less well known is that Adams first came into public view through his orchestral music. After studying at Harvard with Leon Kirchner and serving as composer-in-residence at the Marlboro Festival of 1970, Adams moved to California in 1971. Following ten years of teaching, he became new-music advisor to the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Together with conductor Edo De Waart, Adams created the New and Unusual Music series. Largely because of that series, Adams was appointed composer-in-residence to the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra during the years 1982-85, and he also worked on projects with theorchestra of the San Francisco Ballet Company. The music of Adams gradually became known to the general public through these collaborations.

Premiered in 1986, Short Ride in a Fast Machine is a 20th-century extension of the big orchestral scherzos of the Romantic era. Quick, joyful, and exuberant, it rides along on feeling and atmosphere rather than thematic development. The few melodies Adams presents are delightfully rambling tunes etched on the rapid, repetitive background that is so exciting in this piece. In an article on John Adams, Ingram D. Marshall pointed out that "Adams differs from many of the minimalist school in that he writes detailed, through-composed, formalized music that is also quite accessible."

 In 1838, Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) wrote to violin virtuoso Ferdinand David, "I should like to write a violin concerto for you next winter. One in E minor keeps running through my head, and its beginning gives me no rest." Despite being haunted by the now-famous theme, Mendelssohn did not complete his Leipzig colleague's concerto for another seven years. Mendelssohn wrote the E Minor Concerto mostly during his summer holiday near Frankfurt-am-Main in 1843. The following winter he and David exchanged ideas about the violin part, and Mendelssohn made alterations and adjustments almost right up to the premiere, which took place in March 1844. The concerto was an immediate success. And, as David predicted, Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto took its place in the Romantic literature next to that of Beethoven.

"The whole first solo is to be played on the high E string," declared Mendelssohn while writing the first movement. Without the customary orchestral prologue, the soloist introduces the opening theme, and this is the first of several innovations for which the concerto is noted. Following a lyrical second theme and a passionate development section comes the work's only full cadenza. This section is said to have been mostly David's work. The recapitulation leads without pause into the Andante movement. In this three-part form the agitated middle section opposes the quiet, almost religious, outer sections. Again, without pause, the Allegretto introduction to the finale follows. It is based on a transformation of the first movement's principal theme. The finale itself turns to E major and presents a puckish main theme reminiscent of the Scherzo from A Midsummer Night's Dream. During the development, the orchestra plays the main theme while the soloist introduces a lyrical counterpoint against it. The solo violin part, given little rest in this concerto, continues to hold forth through the brilliant concluding coda.

 The expression "from the sublime to the ridiculous" could have applied to the 1813 concert program on which the Seventh Symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was premiered. It began with the new symphony that the master had touted as "one of my best" (an opinion he later maintained). The concert continued with marches written by Dussek and Pleyel for Mälzel's "Mechanical Trumpeter." It concluded with the orchestral version of Beethoven's Wellington's Victory (the "battle symphony"). Contemporary reports confirm that the event was a great triumph for Beethoven and that the second movement of the Seventh Symphony even had to be encored. Although the Seventh Symphony has its own unique personality, Beethoven carried over certain aspects of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies into it. From the Fifth came the motor impulse of a single driving rhythm. However, unlike the Fifth, each movement of the Seventh finds its own unique rhythm to generate themes. From the "Pastoral" Symphony, the Seventh inherits a celebration ofNature. In the Sixth, this often took the form of reflection and quiet reverence, but in the Seventh it is a vibrant, life-affirming paean.

The latter feature is particularly apparent in the peasant round-dance character of the first movement's main theme, introduced after a lengthy slow introduction. The repetitive rhythm of this theme proves to pervade the entire movement, generating nearly all the material Beethoven needs. The second movement, Allegretto, is a set of variations on one of Beethoven's famous hymn-like themes, and this one in A minor suggests noble tragedy. Later, there are brighter sections in the major mode, and the movement reaches a highpoint in a fugato on the main theme, one of the most thrilling fugati in all Beethoven's symphonic writing.

The sunny and exhilarating Scherzo movement fits well into the symphony's proportions. That is because the Trio appears twice, giving the whole movement a form of A-B-A-B-A. In contrast with the bouncy quality and broad wit of the main section, the sustained violin notes behind the Trio's theme lend it a magical, time-suspended quality.

Beethoven's rhythmic impulse is again dance-like in the finale. The main theme is even divided into short repeated strains as in a real dance piece, though the movement is a sonata form. Some critics have found this final movement to be somewhat "irresponsible" in spirit or even "terrifying." However, Beethoven biographer J.W.N. Sullivan recognizes that here "we are in the region of pure ecstasy, a reckless, headlong ecstasy, a more than Bacchic festival ofjoy."