I remember seeing a guy busking at a local farmer’s market with a baritone recorder and it was one of the most haunting and beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard. Any instrument can sound good in skilled hands.
The recorder is among the rare group of instruments that all but require mastery in order to produce anything resembling music. Not unlike the armpit, bagpipes, and spoons.
It’s quite easy to produce music on the recorder. Young children often lack the breath control to not overblow and produce a horrible sound, but getting past that stage is seriously not that hard.
Beyond that, I would say that while instruments vary in their inherent difficulty, almost all instruments have music written for them that is designed to stretch the absolute masters of those instruments. The ceiling on musical skill is extremely high because of this.
The recorder is like the guitar: just because generations of talentless kids inflicted them on their parents doesn’t mean they’re bad instruments incapable of producing good music. It’s just that most people have also heard good guitar and know what it can sound like, while very few have heard good recorder.
