Having played a gamba in college, despite its obvious limitations due to the frets, you could play wicked multi string chords not possible on a cello. Sadly due to the gut strings it did not like air conditioning. Because it had frets I as a guitar/bass player could actually learn to play it reasonably well.
No surprise, then, that in the Polish-language video linked elsewhere in the comments here, he plays a couple of M. de Sainte Colombe pieces, as he was a master gamba performer and composer.