Canzoni e Danze: Wind Music from Renaissance Italy

Piffaro discs make this sedentary fool want to get up and dance. Renaissance dance music is a much-underrated source of general delight, anyway. You don't have to be the kind of specialist listener who loves medieval masses to get a kick out of this tasty, highly rhythmic music--the disco of an earlier era. The tunes are appealing, the sounds of the varied instruments consistently delightful. I rate discs of Renaissance dances not so much by their authenticity, a debatable matter anyway, but rather by their danceability. Piffaro discs rank consistently high in this respect, and they are realistically recorded. --Leslie Gerber