Among the confirmations was an exceptionally original Frenchman, François-Bernard Mâche. We hadn't heard much of his work, but we'd heard a lot about him. The production lives up to its promise. F-B Mâche goes further than the imitators of fashions, those of the East, those of the Middle Ages, those of electroacoustics. In the old quarrel between those who want to make noises from sounds and those who want sounds from noises, he takes a stand for the non-existence of the problem. Thus, with Kemit (dating from 1970), written for solo darbouka (an ancient Nubian instrument), he attacks the "paralyzing respect for traditional music" and demonstrates that these instruments can have "enough universality that their interest does not lie entirely in their original function". Which is a fine way of saying that we don't make pianos for pianos' sake, but use them for musical purposes.

                                        Jacques Longchampt