Australian Chamber Orchestra 2016 Season Music Ron Cerabona Australian Chamber Orchestra 2016 Season. Artistic director Richard Tognetti. All concerts in Llewellyn Hall, ANU School of Music. See: aco.com.au. 
Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto will be playing in Beethoven and the 21st Century on   February 6. Photo: Kaapo Kamu I n Beethoven and the 21st Century (  February 6), Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto begins the ACO's 2016 season in his new role as artistic director of the ACO Collective (formerly known as ACO2) with a program combining contemporary and classic works including an arrangement for strings of Beethoven's String Quartet in F minor Op. 95, Serioso, Sibelius' Rakastava, Tippett's A Lament from Variations on an Elizabethan Theme and Erkki-Sven Tuur's Action- Passion-Illusion.
Cinemusica (  April 9) marks the first collaboration between the ACO and Australian percussion sonic identity Synergy in a program showcasing the possibilities of strings and percussion. It features a new work by Synergy's artistic director, Timothy Constable and also includes selections from Thomas Newman's score from American Beauty, Bernard Herrmann's Psycho: A Suite for Strings and Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, used in the Stanley Kubrick film The Shining.
Beethoven & Mozart V (  May 7) has a focus on the fugue, with Contrapunctus 1-4 from The Art of Fugue by Bach, who inspired Beethoven. The latter's Fugue in D Major, Op.137 and Grosse Fuge, Op.133 are on the program along with his String Quartet in B-flat major, Op.
130, all arranged for strings, and Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, "Turkish".
Sequenza Italia (  June 25) will be directed by cellist Giovanni Sollima, who will lead a program through 500 years of Italian music- making ranging from Monteverdi's Lamento della ninfa arranged for strings to Paganini's Introduction and Variations on Dal tuo stellate soglio from Rossini's Moses in Egypt to Sollima's own Fecit Neap 17 ... , for Cello, Strings and Continuo.
Slava, Rodrigo & Beethoven VII (  November 5) features guitarist Slava Grigoryan as soloist in the popular Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo with its pensive Adagio and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7.
And Beethoven Finale (  November 26), directed by Lorenza Borrani, again features a strings arrangement of one of the composer's string quartets (in C-sharp minor, Op. 131) as well as Schnittke's Sonata for Violin and Chamber Orchestra and Schubert's Five Minuets and Six Trios, D.89.