‘History is cruel, and the history of music is no exception’, begin the notes to this latest top-drawer offering from Fantasticus; notes which go on to remind us of the strange caprices of history which can reduce composers venerated in their lifetimes to trivial footnotes while elevating figures originally considered relatively unimportant to ‘forgotten gem’ status.

Louis-Gabriel Guillemain (1705 70) is certainly one such victim of this cruelty, given that as a master violinist he was once one of the most respected and highest-paid musicians at the court of Louis XV; although given no more than 18 works were published during his lifetime, we perhaps can’t hold history entirely responsible for his profile having dipped since he took his own life in 1770 as a debt-ridden 65 year-old (by stabbing himself 14 times at the foot of a willow tree, if some contemporary accounts are to be believed).

On to these six Op 12 sonatas for transverse flute, violin, bass viol and basso continuo, and while they sit within the portion of Guilleman’s output clearly pitched at a far wider, less virtuoso market than works such as his striking 12 Caprices for solo violin, this doesn’t mean that they don’t have a vim of their own, and indeed their technical difficulties. Hazelzet and Fantasticus make an immensely strong case for them here: smoothly flowing readings high on intellectual sparkle and cheerful chamber conviviality, nimbly wrought articulation and subtly instinctive shaping that brings out the conversational qualities of the solo lines. There’s also a lovely blend to their sound, helped by a remarkably even balancing of parts which honours the writing’s equal interplay between the instruments.

In other words, while history has perhaps been a little cruel to Guilleman, Fantasticus themselves have been very kind indeed.