The Australian Chamber Orchestra is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the appointment of Richard Tognetti as its Artistic Director. That is a long time but the orchestra’s recently announced 2016 season shows no evidence of flagging energy or lack of inventiveness. Rather Tognetti’s boundless curiosity is on display in the programming; it isn’t conservative but it does come back to a focus on the core string ensemble where it all started.

The great rock of the year’s programs will be Beethoven’s monumental late string quartets.Some chamber music purists may object to such works being arranged for an orchestra, even a chamber-sized one, but there is good artistic precedent for such arrangements. Others would argue that these quartets, great as they are, can seem rather ascetic and that they gain from the emotional weight of additional strings including the double bass. It is not a heresy to suggest that a Beethoven composition can be effective or enhanced when played by forces other than those he imagined.

Unquestionably Beethoven was deeply influenced by Bach and also Mozart and Vivaldi, all of whose works are represented in the 2016 programs. More recent works are included which some will enjoy as effective spice to the programs while others will find them an intrusive distraction. It’s like the ‘sandwich’ programming we used in the seventies: familiar works as the outer ‘slices’ and less familiar woks as the ‘filling’. I’ll try to keep an open mind.