The motto Vivi felice! gives this programme its cheerful, open basic tone. Music from Italy, Spain and Dalmatia leads through three centuries and combines dances, frottole, variations on Follia, diminutions and Spanish organ music in a colourful Mediterranean panorama.
The selection does not follow chronology alone, but the relationships between rhythm, melody and timbre. Italian, Iberian and Dalmatian traditions meet in related gestures: in the interplay of vocal line and dance impulse, in freely expansive ornamentation and in a delight in contrasting instrumental colours.
Jeremias Schwarzer and Egon Mihajlovic shape this music as a flexible chamber-musical dialogue. The recorder enters into ever-new tonal relationships with harpsichord or organ, at times as a singing voice, at times almost as an additional register. The recording preserves its historical grounding while speaking with immediate joy in performance.