Ensemble Mécanique

Concerts for robotic ensemble with 5 pianos, 2 xylophones, 1 marimba, 4 drums, 1 TamTam, 3 propellers, 7 bells and 3 sirens. George Antheil composed his Ballet Mécanique in the 1920s, when machines were already driving the industrial revolution. The “Graz version” of the work will be performed for the first time in this concert in the version of 1925 with all the planned instruments at the original tempo of 153. Winfried Ritsch's Canon for Machine Orchestra is an algorithmic composition that interweaves dynamic progressions of sound surfaces of the “automata” as a repeatable canon. In the third piece, the Percussion Piece, rhythm patterns by Helmut Kaplan are automated and playfully combined to form a new composition.