Steve Reich/ Kraftwerk, Manchester Velodrome

A velodrome was a symbolically perfect location for Kraftwerk but it didn’t do Steve Reich’s first new work in two years any favours. His piece “2x5” suffered the concert equivalent of a flat tyre, in contrast to Kraftwerk’s powerful glide through their back catalogue.

The pairing of the German electronic pop pioneers and the US minimalist composer marked the launch of the Manchester International Festival, a biennial season dedicated to new work. This year’s programme includes dance from Carlos Acosta, orchestral concerts by local heroes Elbow and Rufus Wainwright’s debut as an opera composer.

Reich’s composition, commissioned by the festival, was performed by the New York quintet Bang on a Can All-Stars. Titled in the literal style of previous Reich compositions (“Music for 18 Musicians”, “Double Sextet”), “2x5” doubled up the five musicians on stage with a pre-recorded tape of them playing the same score.

The intended doppelganger effect chimed with Kraftwerk’s fusion of man and machine but was too subtle for the expansive space of the Manchester Velodrome. Insistent piano, juddering bass and flickering guitars mixed rock’s dynamic rhythms with minimalism’s probing repetitions, but the distracting sound of chatter underlined its struggle to hold the attention.

Kraftwerk had no new music to offer, although there was a fancy 3D stage show and the novelty of seeing them in a velodrome. Their leader, 62-year-old Ralf Hütter, is a cycling obsessive whose marathon pedalling habits having been blamed for the group’s sporadic output. Notoriously private, they show no signs of following up their last studio album, 2003’s Tour de France Soundtracks, which idealised cycling as a flawless synthesis of flesh and metal.

Opening with their anthem to technological transformation “The Man-Machine” the four band members stood at consoles in black zip-up jackets like lab assistants in a Bond villain’s lair. The look was stylised and emotionless, though Hütter’s face, usually the acme of ironic reserve, lit up when four members of the UK’s gold-medal- winning Olympic cycling team, suddenly emerged to whizz around the track for “Tour de France”.

There were to be no other surprises, however. Hütter, the sole survivor of the original line-up following Florian Schneider’s unexplained departure last year, advertised Kraftwerk’s durability by leading the band through a smoothly assembled greatest hits package.

“Autobahn”’s computerised Beach Boys harmonies illustrated Kraftwerk’s modernisation of pop in the 1970s. But now they’ve become a kind of futuristic heritage act. The biggest cheer of the evening came for the stage robots who delivered the song “Robots”. It’s a stalwart routine in their act, the techno-pop equivalent of Pink Floyd’s inflatable pigs. (Poignantly, Schneider’s robot lookalike was still visible in the graphics accompanying the song.)

Yet for all the predictability, the mixture of visuals, music and performance that Kraftwerk bring to their live act continues to dazzle, and the 3D graphics in the latter stages of the show, for which the audience donned special glasses, were an impressive development. Enormous pills spun from the screen for “Vitamin”; alarming signs flashed out during “Radioactivity”. Hütter, last to leave the stage, concluded by reprising the opening riffs from “The Man-Machine”, cyclically ending the show back at the beginning. Like Hütter’s favourite pastime, Kraftwerk cycle on. ★★★★☆

The Manchester International Festival runs until July 19, www.mif.co.uk