"CrossCut Edition" [20 Years "Contemporary Music Edition" of the German Music Council released by WERGO] is a game with games. Scraps, aphorisms, memos, brief gestures, isolated signs … – the art music of our age favors terseness, the pithy utterance. It also favors fully elaborated fragments, torsos. And yet, the New Music loves expanses. For 20 years, the "Contemporary Music Edition" has documented the history of music, composition, and performance in Germany – and has helped to write it in the process. Reason enough to take stock in its anniversary year and to launch a "CrossCut Edition" containing excerpts from its 61 CD portraits, with specially composed connecting links, interpolations, and remixes. "CrossCut Edition" – a game involving many parts of a whole that is destined never to reach completion.
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