Tempus ex machina / Elbtonal Percussion

The percussionists of the Hamburg-based formation Elbtonal Percussion provide a fascinating listening experience on the second day of »Greatest Hits«, the festival for contemporary music at Kampnagel and the Elbphilharmonie. »Tempus ex machina« is a study of the construction and disintegration of rhythm. In this work, French composer Gérard Grisey superimposes the rhythms upon one another in varying tempi, as if they came out of nowhere, combining them into patterns and compressing them into trills until the listener only hears them as an expanse of sound.