The silhouettes of three orchestra performers against a harsh orange backdrop.

ACO In Motion

  • Classical Music
  • Australian Chamber Orchestra
  • Concert Hall
  • Run time: 120 minutes, including 1 interval Subject to change
  • Seating map

Experience the Orchestra in full flight in this irrepressible program featuring Death and the Maiden and Different Trains

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.

Presented by the Australian Chamber Orchestra

Event details

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

Program

Missy Mazzoli The Shield of the Heart is the Heart

Béla Bartók (arr. strings) String Quartet No.3, Sz.85

Steve Reich (arr. strings) Different Trains

Franz Schubert (arr. Richard Tognetti) String Quartet No.14 in D minor, D.810 
“Death and the Maiden”

Artists

Director & Violin Richard Tognetti

Australian Chamber Orchestra

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Attending this event

Practical information about this event, ticketing and visiting. If you have questions or need help, see our general terms and conditions for tickets and events or contact us.

Ticket information

If you have further questions or need help, please refer to our general terms and conditions for tickets and events or contact a member of our team on 1300 764 849.

Plan your visit

Address

Sydney Opera House
Bennelong Point
Sydney NSW 2000
Australia

Getting to the venue

The Opera House is a 7-10 minute walk from Circular Quay, and is easily accessible by car, train, ferry, lightrail, bus, bike and on foot.

Location and access

Concert Hall

The Concert Hall is located beneath the largest of Sydney Opera House’s roof sails, filling the upper levels of the west side of the building. Best accessed through the covered concourse. 

All Sydney Opera House foyers are accessible, with lifts to the main and western foyers. The public lift to all foyers is accessible from the corridor near the escalators on the Lower Concourse and also in the Western Foyer via the corridor on the Ground Level (at the top of the escalators).

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