Unclear

Agricola was praised by his contemporaries for the bizarre turn of his inspiration, and his music likened to quicksilver. By the standards of the period this is a highly unusual turn of phrase, but remains spot-on. The Ferrara Ensemble anthology, the first ever devoted to the composer, focused on the secular music, both instrumental and vocal, precisely the area covered by Michael Posch and Ensemble Unicorn in this most satisfying disc. Where there's duplication (surprisingly little, in fact) the performances compare with those of the Ferrara Ensemble, although the style of singing is very different. The voices are more up front and less inflected, perhaps the better to match the high instruments with which they're sometimes doubled. But the tensile quality of Agricola's lines comes through none the less, as does the miraculous inventiveness and charm of his music. Further, much of what's new to the catalogue really is indispensible, for example Agricola's most famous song, Allez, regretz. Unicorn keeps its improvisations and excursions to a minimum, and the music is the better for it. It really is a must-have.

Joe Cocker is a star whose success has always been touched with sadness; a performer whose performing span was limited by the sheer destructiveness of the performance. Only singers of opera, surely, can sustain such an act: and then only by restricting their movements on stage and going easy on the whisky and cocaine. So Joe was the jaded rock star of 1973/74; like John Lennon forgetting himself in a New York nightclub, Joe's music was going to seed. Only John claims it wasn't like that at all - and Joe didn't lose it completely.