Music and mythology with François-Bernard Mâche and Musicatreize 
This monographic CD, "Pluie d'or", is the culmination of Musicatreize's long association with the composer François-Bernard Mâche, whose four works on this recording span almost sixty years (1959-2017) of sound creation.
A composer and musicologist with a passion for Greek civilisation (he obtained a postgraduate diploma in Greek archaeology in 1957), François-Bernard Mâche writes music nourished by this historical and literary baggage, conveying legends, the beauty of the ancient language and its evocative power. The first piece on this album, Safous Mélè (Sappho's music), is a case in point, with the counter-alto voice carried by the choir highlighting the sonorities of the greek - a tone language- according to the composer,  through the verses of the poetess. The instruments are not to be outdone, colouring and even relaying the vocal texture ("Le charme d'un bois de pommiers"). The treatment of the harp sometimes seems to evoke the ancient zither, while the flutes and oboes embrace the solo voice in "Et moi, j'aime la volupté". Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire comes to mind in "Voici qu'Eros à nouveau", when the complicity of the instruments and the voice borrow from the Sprechgesang technique. Sapphô is also called upon, this time alongside Novalis, in Heol dall ('Blind Sun' in Breton), for twelve mixed voices and two pianos, a piece dedicated to Musicatreize and its conductor Roland Hayrabedian, who premiered it in 2004. It is an "ecumenical" work, the composer warns, in which the Greek, French and German languages converge and merge into an idiom that is more aural than semantic. The two pianos set the tone, opening the piece with a vehement dance that leads the choir to an initial climax. The rhythmic fervour that embraces the writing here translates the desire to go beyond life. The "praise" is impressive, expressed by the voices rising in onomatopoeic power, doubled by the two pianos that extend the resonance. 
The vitality and virtuosity of Musicatreize's orchestras are brought to the fore in a final, white-hot sequence. The same process of amplification drives the writing of Invocations, a recent piece (2017), commissioned by the Cirm de Nice (Centre national de création musicale), for six voices and two percussionists, based on magical papyri from Hellenic Egypt. The choir sings only the five vowels, echoes of the formulas inscribed on these magical papyri, to establish a relay between music, man and the cosmos: one is reminded of Stockhausen's Stimmung. Four stages and as many sound gestures (voice and vibraphone) punctuate this ritual whose invoking voices culminate in the end, multiplied by the resonance of the cymbal that sets the sound space ablaze.

                                                   Michèle Tosi Resmusica.com 2.12.2019

CD L'empreinte digitale 

François-Bernard Mâche's passion for ancient Greece focuses here on Sappho, the poetess embodied in Safous Mélè (1958-1959) by a contralto. Marie-George Monet's warm, powerful voice stands up to the flutes, oboes and percussion. A women's choir extends the soloist's voice with a shimmering harmonic aura and polyphonic ramifications. Despite a few passages of spoken word or Sprechgesang, the fluidity of the melody dominates.
Heol dall (2003) brings Sappho and Novalis together in a song of longing for death. The two pianos that spur on the mixed choir engage in a Ligeti-like ascending process, while the vocal polyphony seems to refer to its distant Central African cousin.
A very tight polyrhythmic echo produces a quasi-electronic effect at the start of Danaé (1970). Roland Hayrabedian and the twelve voices of Musicatreize take up a real challenge here. The highly dynamic rhythmic scansion, including speech and onomatopoeia, was inspired by the singing of the Hunza people of present-day Pakistan.
The recent Invocations (2017) testify to the composer's stylistic openness to a consonance reminiscent of Stockhausen's Stimmung and allow Musicatreize to showcase, in addition to its precision and organicity, a definite sense of timbral construction.

                                                   Pierre Rigaudière.    Diapason, February 2020