The Opening Night is divided into three parts and can be experienced with one ticket.
Georges Antheil - Ballet Mécanique
for 4 pianos and 12 percussionists:inside
Óscar Escudero/Belenish Moreno-Gil - Empty Rave
Multimedia premiere for percussion quartet in front of video screens
Benny Greb Brass Band
Georges Antheil's Ballet Mécanique is a key work of modernism that caused a sensation at its premiere in 1924. The work emerged from the spirit of the Parisian avant-garde and sought to join forces with other new media such as film. It is not only "a signal of these troubled, war-threatened times", as Antheil himself emphasised, but also a "mechanistic dance of life". Listen out especially for industrial noise, salon music, doorbells and airplane propellers.
To mark its 100th anniversary, this performance of the ground- breaking original version for ten percussionists and four pianos will be juxtaposed with a new commission composed by a team led by Spanish post-composers Óscar Escudero and Belenish Moreno-Gil. With Empty Rave, they take up the motif of the mechanistic dance of life and transfer it to the present day. They create a vibrant paradox: a reflection on rave as both an individualistic and collective counterculture. In times of independent artificial intelligence, they trace the emptiness at the core of technology and fill it with a new communal experience. Past and present come together to form the perfect prelude to the festival.
As in 2022, the opening concert is performed primarily by musicians from the Hannover region and the Hanoverian ensemble Rummsfeld. They are supported by the internationally sought-after conductor Jonathan Stockhammer and the up-and-coming sh|ft ensemble.
Following the opening concert Benny Greb will accompany us into the night with his four-piece brass band. The ECHO Jazz award winner is one of the most influential and well-known German drummers who is creating a renewed interest in drums on a global scale.
Lineup
Jonathan Stockhammer conductor
Rummsfeld & Friends percussionists of the state orchestra of lower saxony and guests
sh|ft Ensemble
Benny Greb & Brass Band