Space and time for contemporary productions
Sa.
29.02.20
19:30

cresc... presents: BALLET MÉCANIQUE

George Antheil: Ballet Mécanique für 4 Pianos und 12 Schlagzeuger (Version 1953)
Enno Poppe: Rundfunk für 9 Synthesizer (2018)

Ensemble Modern
ensemble mosaik
Enno Poppe (conductor)

duration: 1 h 40 min / without interval

He was considered an »enfant terrible« and »bad boy of music«, and in the 1920s he composed what was arguably the most famous machine music of his time, one of the key works of the »Roaring Twenties«. With his Ballet Mécanique, George Antheil left the protective cocoon of art and introduced the raw reality of machinery onto the stage, with whizzing and crashing noises of sirens and propellers. His outlook was marked by a fascination with technical modernism, and he gazed confidently into a future which held no boundaries for humanity.
While Antheil viewed the golden future of machines, the composer Enno Poppe looks back with a wink to synthesizer sounds of the past. In his virtuosic, polyphonic piece Rundfunk, premiered in 2018, Poppe reminisces about the early days of the experimental studios of various broadcasting companies and their extreme importance for the support and development of electronic music. Rundfunk unfolds an overarching panorama of historical electronic sounds, with attention to the most minute detail.
The sounds of Minimoogs and the »pig organs« of the 1960s and 1970s are dissected and reassembled by computer. The piece resembles fireworks which the composer and the musicians of ensemble mosaik launch with breakneck tempi, stuttering rhythms and idiosyncratic sign language.

cresc... is funded by Kulturfonds Frankfurt Rhein Main.

(c) Distruktur

Tickets:
19,– € · erm. 10,50 €
www.reservix.de/BalletMécanique
or a ticket for Ballet Mécanique + Opus Infinity:
www.reservix.de/BalletMécanique+OpusInfinity
or at the evening box office