Chamber Symphony is a cheeky 1992 composition for a 15-member chamber orchestra by American composer John Adams, inspired by Arnold Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony no.1, op.9.

Commissioned by the Gerbode Foundation of San Francisco for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, but premiered by the Schoenberg Ensemble in The Hague on 17 January 1993, the commissioners gave the US premiere on 12 April 1993.

With strong roots in minimalism, he is responsible for more than 60 major compositions including his breakthrough piece for string septet, Shaker Loops (1978), and On the Transmigration of Souls (2002), a piece for orchestra and chorus commemorating the victims of the 11 September 2001 attacks, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2003.

In addition to the Pulitzer, Adams has received the Erasmus Prize, five Grammy Awards and six honorary doctorates.

In the notes for this splendid BMOP release, Adams writes: “With Chamber Symphony, I originally set out to write a children’s piece, and my intentions were to sample the voices of children.

“But before I began that project, I had one of those strange interludes that often lead to a new piece. I was sitting in my studio, studying the score to Schoenberg’s symphony and as I was doing so, I became aware that my seven-year-old son Sam was in the adjacent room watching cartoons.

“The hyperactive, insistently aggressive and acrobatic scores for the cartoons mixed in my head with the Schoenberg music, itself hyperactive, acrobatic and not a little aggressive, and I realised suddenly how much these two traditions had in common.”

Common Tones in Simple Time was Adams’s first orchestral work, written after the premiere of Shaker Loops. As the title suggests, the compositional and affective concerns were decidedly minimalist.

Son of Chamber Symphony, composed in 2007, bears a resemblance to its predecessor and is similarly highly animated.

This is a rare opportunity to hear all these works together on one disc.