Assuming you’re after a complete set of Telemann’s Twelve Fantasias for unaccompanied flute, is there any living flautist you’d rather have them from than Emmanuel Pahud? But would you want them as part of an epic two-disc anthology of unaccompanied flute music, alternating with works that range chronologically from Marin Marais’s Les folies d’Espagne (1701) to Jörg Widmann’s Petite suite (2016)?

That’s what Pahud presents here, and it’s formidable. If he wanted to demonstrate the richness of his instrument’s solo repertoire, he’s succeeded: the absence of Debussy’s Syrinx feels very pointed. And, of course, he handles every piece idiomatically, expressively and with a tonal palette that ranges from a breathy bottom-register whisper to piercing flashes of stratospheric light. Works by Berio and Widmann, plus Matthias Pintscher’s neo-spectralist Beyond, sound at times as if they require a different extended technique almost by the note.

But Pahud is just as completely inside the milder repertoire: whether the delicately layered shades that he finds in Takemitsu’s lovely Air (the opening item in the programme – nicely balanced nearly two and a half hours later as a sort of envoi by Varèse’s Density 21.5), or the sweet, clear sound which he brings to Pierre-Octave Ferroud’s Trois Pièces (there’s a discreet but delicious swing of the hips to the central piece, ‘Jade’). Telemann weaves through it all like a thread, and that’s where my reservations lie. Sometimes the pairings are wonderfully effective: as when Arvo Pärt’s artless mock-baroque Estländler emerges from the final patterns of Fantasia No 11. But you might well jump when the sudden, guttural opening shout of Takemitsu’s Voice follows straight after Fantasia No 3.

I’m not entirely sure Telemann is best served by being presented like this. You lose any possibility of an overarching narrative, and Pahud’s approach is almost too characterful: fluid and responsive to individual phrases, his rubato can disrupt the sense of song and dance that defines Telemann’s ideas, even while it blurs the stylistic boundaries between the Fantasias and the rest of the programme. That might be intentional, of course, and it’s a relatively minor reservation. For the quality of the playing and the sheer scope of musical imagination on display here, every flute aficionado is going to want this collection on their shelf.