Music is seldom unadulterated. The aesthetic process – both of composition and of perception – is almost always influenced by extra-musical phenomena. Historical, physical, and ethnological forces have “gotten in the way” of the compositions on this album, determining the values between the sounds, the crossings into those musical realms where hearing becomes, in the best sense of the word, unclear. In Vassos Nicolaou's ensemble piece "Farbenmaschinen“ structurally completely different tonal layers continuously interact with each other, whereas Johannes Schoellhorn's "Pièces croisées" is like a musical shell game of memories. Sound and notated noise collide in Gerard Grisey's "Partiels", and Dieter Mack's "Kammermusik V" points to intercultural communication problems and even speechlessness. Richter, one of the most important living German artists, has been a member of the board of trustees of the Ensemble Musikfabrik since 2009.