Seicento Stravagante are a cornetto and keyboard duo, formed in 2018 and here making their recording debut in core repertoire – Italian music of the 17th century. Most of the composers will be familiar to anyone who likes this kind of thing, with styles ranging from brash, new, stylus phantasticus Baroque sonatas with continuo by Castello, Fontana, Cesare and Marini to gentler works based on Renaissance vocal models by the likes of Rognoni, Rognoni Taeggio, Dalla Casa, Notari and Frescobaldi. Though much of the music is today more commonly associated with the violin, the cornetto was from the start seen as a legitimate alternative.

The duo claim as a key aim the highlighting of historic Italian organs, and indeed the two instruments used here have a fine pedigree: a brightly shining, up-close late 17th-century model by Paolo Cipri in Monte San Giovanni in Bologna does the bulk of the work (including the solo pieces by Padovano, Salvatore and Anon), while two tracks are presented on a softer, richer and slightly more reserved anonymous Venetian organ from around 1660. Elsewhere a pleasantly plinky Italian harpsichord also serves, as does a fiery regal. Nicola Lamon plays them all with skill and refinement; his continuo realisations contribute active support while not being over-fussy or intrusive, and perhaps the only thing to be wished for is a little more structural shaping for the organ solos.

The cornetto-playing of David Brutti is more distinctive. His biography tells us he was a saxophonist before falling in love with Renaissance and Baroque music and taking up the cornetto – a formidable challenge at any stage of an instrumentalist’s career. His virtuosity is evident in the sonatas, and his lyrical skill in pieces such as Notari’s song transcription ‘Ahi, che s’acresce in me’, while both are on show in Dalla Casa’s flowing gloss on Lassus’s beautiful ‘Susanne un jour’. Where Brutti’s saxophone self really shows itself, however, is in a surprising readiness to sweeten things with suave vibrato and in a forthright, confidently projected manner that brings new character to his instrument. In two pieces he uses something called a ‘mute cornetto’ that sounds almost like a cor anglais, and in other ones there is a brassy brightness that in the concluding Marini sonata stirs thoughts of Maurice André’s trumpet. Remarkable stuff!