Alexander Agricola (1446-1506) is little known outside the circle of "early music" connoisseurs, among whom he has cult stature as one of the most original and 'difficult' composers of the Burgundian/Franco-Flemish Renaissance. He was already a 'musician's composer' in his own lifetime, the subtlest exponent of the 'new' manner of composition that no longer assembled the lines of polyphony in ad hoc sequence from the 'tenor' outwards but instead conceived the music in toto from the start.

lexander Agricola, the quincentenary of whose death fell in 2006, is not over-represented in the catalogue so this disc, then, is very welcome. Fretwork take hold of this frequently unpredictable music (all but one of the pieces are performed in new editions by composer Fabrice Fitch) with confidence. They produce performances of exuberance, proving that what a contemporary of the composer called his 'bizarre and crazy manner', as Fitch notes, can either be subverted or assumed to be, in fact, less crazy than it might appear and give impressive musical results.

Agricola was already considered one of the 'old masters' soon after his death in 1506. His works were approached with veneration and, already in the early 16th century, regarded as examples of good and demanding counterpoint. As a member of the first generation of genuinely instrumental composers, he wrote not only the masses, motets and chansons that were customary during this period, but also a large number of works without text that were obviously created for instruments by virtue of their construction. As a result, his musical rhetoric went considerably farther than his otherwise congenial colleagues Josquin Desprez and Heinrich Isaac, and he composed instru¬mental works that were far ahead of his time.

La Main Harmonique was founded to promote mediaeval and Renaissance music. The term refers to a mnemonic device which takes its name from the early theoretician, Guido d'Arezzo. One starts by feeling encouraged that yet another small, independent, group is dedicated to furthering polyphonic and solo music from the period. It doesn't take very long for that encouragement to be justified. Theirs is singing of great poise, delicacy and precision as they work their way sensitively through small-scale works from the courts of the Château de Moulins and Duke of Bourbon during the reigns of Anne and Pierre II of Beaujeu in the later fifteenth century.

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.

The Schola Cantorum in Basel has long championed the imaginative exploration of early music, creating expertly-researched programmes and encouraging superbly-performed interpretations with a close attention also to the most appropriate recording conditions. Such was the case with Amours amours amours, a disc of lute duos starting from music composed in the fifteenth century, recorded in 2001 by Karl-Ernst Schröder and Crawford Young.

Agricola is not a regional soft drink from the Corn Belt, but a composer whose works were considered almost the equal of Josquin's by chroniclers of the sixteenth century. Born around 1446, he was a near contemporary of Josquin's great predecessor, Jacob Obrecht, and like his Flemish contemporaries he went south to seek fame and fortune through employment with Italy's powerful nobles. Recordings of his works have been few and far between, so any addition to the discography is welcome, and the pair of masses included here are both historically important works.