Disc reviews Brian Robins "FANFARE" Jean-Marie Leclair’s fourth and final book of sonatas for solo violin and continuo was published in Paris in 1743. It followed the composer’s return to the French capital from The Hague in the wake of the bankruptcy of his patron, the formerly wealthy merchant Francois Du Liz. Like the three earlier books, there are 12 sonatas in the publication, each of which has four movements. As has been frequently noted, Leclair’s great achievement was the fusion of the Corellian sonata with French style, perhaps the most successful (if far from unique) fruition of Francois Couperin’s ambition to achieve a union of the two styles. In this respect, Leclair’s sonatas show little sign of development over the course of the four books of sonatas, it having been plausibly suggested (in New Grove) that most of the sonatas were composed early in Leclair’s career, and subsequently published by degree. There is certainly evidence that by the middle of the 1740s the composer was no longer fashionable, possibly because his music was by then considered outmoded...