Soprano saxophonist Yuval Cohen’s debut for ECM is a thrilling offering that captures the brother of long-time ECM traveller Avishai Cohen charting innovative paths through eight originals in graceful interplay with his freshly formed quartet. Pianist Tom Oren, bassist Alon Near and Alon Benjamini on drums are longtime acquaintances of Yuval’s who are not only outstanding instrumentalists in their own right, but share a deep, intuitive understanding for the leader’s musical language and improvisational approach. “I’m very fortunate to be able to play with these young guys,” says Yuval. “I’ve known them for a long time – they’re three beautiful souls and talents with whom I had a great time shaping this music together.” Throughout the album, the saxophonist demonstrates his own understanding of chamber jazz dynamics and explores a broad range of influences – from folk idioms to motif development borrowed from classical music – to lyrical and contemplative, but also energetic and uplifting results.

The Move were the best and most important British group of the late '60s that never made a significant dent in the American market. Through the band's several phases (which were sometimes dictated more by image than musical direction), their chief asset was guitarist and songwriter Roy Wood, who combined a knack for Beatlesque pop with a peculiarly British, and occasionally morbid, sense of humor. On their final albums (with considerable input from Jeff Lynne), the band became artier and more ambitious, hinting at the orchestral rock that Wood and Lynne would devise for the Electric Light Orchestra. The Move, however, always placed more emphasis on the pop than the art, and never lost sight of their hardcore rock & roll roots.

Composed in 1771 to a libretto by Metastasio tracing the well-known biblical story of Judith and Holofernes, La Betulia liberata was Mozart’s first oratorio. Often described as a stroke of genius, this recording by Les Talens Lyriques and Christophe Rousset, with Sandrine Piau, Amanda Forsythe and Teresa Iervolino, shows the dramatic intensity of which he was already capable at the age of just fifteen and the influence of his early experiences with opera.

Reinhard Keiser’s Der blutige und sterbende Jesus is not only the very first German Passion oratorio but also a highly suspenseful contribution to the Passion season. Lost for many years, it is now available for listening on CD in the revised version of 1729. The dramatic and musical design of Keiser’s work is astonishing. As in the Italian oratorio type that gained currency after 1700, there is no Evangelist or other narrator, which means that the work has a purely dramatic structure. Even though Keiser’s librettist Christian Friedrich Hunold, whose pseudonym was »Menantes,« did not cite any one of the four Evangelists word for word in his adaptation of the Passion narrative, it is quite evident that the poetic elaboration is (primarily) modelled on Luther’s translation of the Gospel of Matthew.

For the French soprano Élisabeth Duparc, known as ‘La Francesina’, Handel composed no fewer than twelve principal roles in major works - operas and oratorios - written towards the end of his life. She took the title role in Semele, for instance, and the parts of Michal in Saul and Nitocris in Belshazzar. Sophie Junker and the Concert de l’Hostel Dieu pay tribute to her here, through some of her most successful roles as the composer’s muse.