The Philadelphia Classical Symphony plays large scale works on period instruments. They've presented big Baroque works like Bach's Mass in B Minor, and they've also performed symphonies and concertos by Beethoven and Mozart. Middleman likes to surround his concerts with period dinners, minuet lessons, and lectures and demonstrations that place the music in its historical context. The music is good and his concerts are fun, too. Generally speaking, Baroque instruments were softer and mellower than their modern counterparts.
Many groups play Baroque music by combining modern strings and winds with the harpsichord.
That's a perfectly satisfactory compromise in the right hands, but a group like Philomel can achieve a more natural balance. Bekker and his colleagues have been at it for two decades now, and their years of experience and study enhance everything they do. It acquired a new name when it received a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon. Piffaro aroused Deutsche Grammophon's interest partly because no other group plays all the instruments its musicians have mastered. In a single Piffaro concert you can hear dulcimers, krumhorns, recorders, bagpipes, sacbuts, hurdy-gurdys, pipe and tabor, flutes, lutes, Renaissance guitars, and various kinds of percussion instruments.