Sauer, who used to play sax with Albert Mangelsdorff, is a veteran of the German jazz scene and has been evolving his own language since the 1960s. He turned heads with last year's Melancholia - the debut for this duo with young pianist Michael Wollny. This absorbing follow-up mixes Björk, Thelonious Monk, Prince, Esbjorn Svensson, and others - and it doesn't fall into the traps of mutual navel-gazing or artificial attempts to turn the pianist into the missing rhythm section.

Wollny plays an exquisite I Loves You Porgy as hinted chords and under-the-lid pluckings, Björk's Where is the Line joins trembling trills to long tenor-drones, and Gil Evans' famous Miles Davis vehicle Blues for Pablo finds Sauer unwinding the horn line against a tumble of busy low-register piano improv. The title track is a slow Mangelsdorff composition of a kind of anguished tenderness, and Lover Man explores Sauer's startling tone-palette. State-of-the-art for the difficult sax-piano duet business.