Revoiced

Saxophones had not been invented when the German composer Heinrich Schütz wrote his eight-voice motet Ich weiß, daß mein Erlöser lebt in 1648. But four of them combine with the 12 singers of the Corvus Consort in the stirring arrangement of Schütz’s piece that opens this imaginative album. The sax quartet provides a solemn underpinning to Gabrieli’s “O magnum mysterium”, while unleashing skirls of ecstatic virtuosity in Bach’s “Weil du mein Gott und Vater bist”. Tracks by four contemporary composers are also included. Of these, James MacMillan’s “Christus vincit” conjures a particularly mesmeric interplay of saxophones and voices.