In an article introducing The Breaking Winds Bassoon Quartet, it mentions that
The muffled, dark-sounding bassoon of the baroque era was so hard to play in tune that composers didn't write solos for it. But a century later, with better reeds and more keys, they began to take notice of its comic potential. Reynolds says Haydn's Symphony No. 93 and Beethoven's Sixth were some of the earliest to feature the bassoon as buffoon.
So, I assume the writer is implying that there is no solo pieces (concertos) composed in Baroque era.
However, this is completely contradictory to my knowledge. Since I know that Vivaldi alone wrote at least 39 (2 of them are incompleted) bassoon concertos. Not to mention other less known composers such as Graupner, Molter, and etc. Each of them also wrote several concerto pieces for Bassoons.
So is it correct for the writer to say that composers didn't write solos for [bassoons]?
Then I am wondering if baroque bassoon is really that difficult to play in tune. Anyone who has played both modern bassoon and baroque bassoon can comment on this?