Alexander Agricola, the quincentenary of whose death falls this year, is not over-represented in the catalogue. Important recordings such as those by the Ferrara Ensemble under Crawford Young (DHM) and the Las Huelgas Ensemble under Paul van Nevel (Sony) are not currently available. This disc, then, is very welcome, and if you have the Young or van Nevel issues, you need not worry about overlap, for it is minimal.

Fretwork take hold of this frequently unpredictable music (all but one of the pieces are performed in new editions by composer and Gramophone contributor 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. The chansons also prove that Agricola was a fine melodist: his contrapuntal strangeness elsewhere (perhaps best shown here in the freely composed Pater meus agricola est) is probably no greater than that of Ockeghem or Obrecht, both of whose counterpoint is frequently thoroughly eccentric.

A unique feature of this anthology is that it includes two parts from Fitch’s cycle of Agricologies, a work in several movements for Fretwork and the Kreutzer String Quartet. The material for the work comes from Agricola, or material used by him, and Fitch makes a point of working, in the first, with his melodic quirkiness and, in the very brief second, with his counterpoint, a remarkable texture being produced by the performers tapping on the strings rather than plucking or bowing. An impressive disc on all counts, which should do much to restore Agricola’s obscure profile to the light.