Music is always moving: through time, through bodies and through generations. ACO In Motion draws four landmark works into a single charged arc that plays to everything the Australian Chamber Orchestra does best: electric performance, bold juxtaposition and the brazen energy of an orchestra at full stretch.

American composer Missy Mazzoli is one of the boldest voices writing today, and The Shield of the Heart is the Heart is taut with coiled energy. Bartók’s Third String Quartet, arranged here for string orchestra, releases the Australian Chamber Orchestra at full velocity. Written in 1927 at the height of his powers, it compresses folk memory, dissonance and rhythmic invention into 15 extraordinary minutes. A century on, its imagination still feels startlingly alive.

At the heart of the program is Steve Reich’s Different Trains. Built from recorded voices layered against the relentless pulse of the trains themselves, it is a hypnotic work of remembrance and reinvention. It redrew the boundaries of what a string ensemble could do, and what music could carry. The program closes with Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet, arranged for strings by Richard Tognetti. Written in the shadow of his own mortality, it is Schubert at his most fearless, dark and driven, blazing with defiant life. In Tognetti’s hands, Schubert’s masterwork of radiant intimacy is amplified towards the sublime.

This performance is available as a part of an Australian Chamber Orchestra 2027 Subscription

• The ACO’s razor-sharp precision across the ensemble was electrifying in the outer movements, their unanimity and attack enhancing the impact of Schubert’s score. - The Strad on the ACO performing Death and the Maiden at Carnegie Hall, 2025