Dario Castello has in recent years turned into one of the stars of 17th-century instrumental music, a thoroughly deserved status that has been achieved despite the fact that we know next to nothing about his life other than that he was a wind player at St Mark’s in Venice at the time Monteverdi was in charge of the music there. Instead it is the quality and white-heat fantasy of his two published books of ensemble sonatas that have done all the talking.

Although Castello has appeared on numerous anthologies, this is, I think, the first time all the sonatas from his first book, first published in 1621, have been presented together. It is a rich treat, possibly (as the Academy of Ancient Music’s theorbo-player William Carter suggests in a readable booklet-note) more than is good for you in one sitting. Yet so eventful are these 12 trio- and quartet-sonatas that you can indeed find yourself gorging greedily. Castello described them as ‘in stil moderno’, and he wasn’t just boasting; cast in the single-movement but multi-sectional manner of the stylus phantasticus, they tumble excitedly through a variety of moods, tempi and textures, leaving you eager to find out what comes next, and often being delighted by it.

The AAM deploy eight musicians over the course of the disc, ranging according to Castello’s suggestions through delicious combinations of airy violin, eloquent cornett, sonorous trombone, fruity dulcian and tautly buzzing violetta, an unusual kind of high cello. The sound of the continuo organ, a splendid thing with real eight-foot pipes, is also not to be missed. The difficulty of these sonatas was acknowledged by Castello but the AAM’s expert players are gleefully equal to the job, and, in music which must sometimes feel rather like a bucking bronco, know when to rein it in and when to give it its head. A joy for ear and spirit.