Late-baroque Italians try to sound Scottish, and their contemporaneous Scots try to sound Italian.  A treat.
_{Stephen Pettit - Records of the Year 2001 The Sunday Times}

Francesco Barsanti, born in Italy, lived and worked in Edinburgh for eight years.  His better-known compatriot Francesco Geminiani didn't set foot in Scotland at all.  Yet both were beguiled by Scottishness in music.  The different styles and approaches of the Italian and (obscure) Scottish composers represented here pleads for the first few listens to be undertaken without following the track listings.  Is this piece by a Scot trying to be Italian, or by an Italian trying to be a Scot?  Is it Scottish with added Italian suavity, or Italian with a Scottish tang?  The sublime - Barsanti's song arrangements, deftly inflected by Concerto Caledonia's players - rubs shoulders with the ridiculous - Lorenzo Bocchi's A Scots Cantata, the banality of whose guttural text is worthy of McGonagall.  Everything is infectiously played and sung.  Bizarre, but utterly compelling.
_{Stephen Pettitt - The Sunday Times}

What a charming collection this is.  Concerto Caledonia explore the early 18th century vogue for Italian music that swept through Scotland and produced a "mongrel" hybrid of the "modern" baroque style of the south with the "ancient" airs of the north.  There are no masterpieces here, but this disc is played with such infectious enthusiasm that the musical shortcomings become part of the enjoyment.
_{Andrew Clarke - The Independent}