John Adams: Harmonielehre (Edo de Waart, San Francisco Symphony, 1985)

Harmonielehre joins minimalist repetition to late-Romantic orchestral scale. Adams has said it grew from a dream of an oil tanker rising out of San Francisco Bay like a rocket, and the first movement opens with pounding, repeated E minor chords. Here the repetition drives towering climaxes that recall Sibelius and Mahler. Choose it for minimalism at its most grand and emotional.