The instruments we have chosen demonstrate some features of style which may be lost to our present-day ears. In recording and playing the music for guitar and piano by Carulli and Giuliani we used very unusual and hard to reproduce resources. The guitar, my copy of a Panormo made in London, has a small maple body, low ivory frets and gut strings. It's paired with an antique 1825 Broadwood square piano, also made in London at the same time.

It would be difficult for the modern-equivalents of these instruments to play together, because their sound is so tonally and dynamically mismatched. But the historical instruments speak just the same way, at roughly the same speed and dynamic level, without the musicians having to compensate. So their marvelous interplay and their graceful co-existence is re-established in our ears, and the composers' intended effect is enhanced.