Vivi Felice! — Live Happy!
More than just an adage by Domenico Scarlatti closing the preface of his Essercizi per gravicembalo, it is a rallying cry — even an urgent one — that Vincent Lhermet, in this new program, invites us to make our own.
At heart, there are two kinds of people: those who have, and those who have never, crossed a border. To all of them, his contemporary (re)reading of eight centuries of Italian migrations, carried on the breath of his travelling accordion, tells small-scale epics.
From the ground bass lines of the Italian Renaissance to the Italophile works of Ligeti; from Bach’s arrangements of Vivaldi’s concertos to a 14th-century lamento; not forgetting the famous follia — fertile ground since the 15th century — an expanse of time takes shape, embodying a European identity.

Italy, the cultural center of this Renaissance Europe, has thus nourished the creativity of countless artists drawn to this “Italian taste.” And if, through the centuries, numerous musical migrations have flowed to and from the peninsula, the work of Matteo Franceschini reminds us — if ever there were need — through the infinite cycle of a tide with human accents, that this country is, like our 21st century, a place of extraordinary inventiveness!