The Age of Extravagance: Virtuoso Music from Iberia and Italy

Christian Century, Dec 13, 2003

Jeremy West, Timothy Roberts, Paula Chateauneuf, Frances Kelly. Hyperion 66977, $18 (http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/details/66977.asp).

West plays the cornetto, a 17th-century wind instrument with a haunting and soulful sound, accompanied by organ, harpsichord, harp and chitarrone (an ancestor of the guitar). Musicians of 300 years ago were correct: no instrument sounds more like the human voice than a cornetto does.