34.review by Infanti

Andrew Infanti: Cultural and historical models in the work of F-B.Mâche (extract)

The gesture of resocialising the piano is accompanied by the creation of textures and forms that reflect an aesthetic of multiplicity. The work Areg, for piano four hands, is a perfect example. By devising independent repetitive melodic-rhythmic cells for each of the two performers without attempting to synchronise them, the composer takes advantage of the freedom of several piano subjects to create a texture that is both ordered (the notes are precise, the general direction inexorable) and unpredictable (the order of the notes remains free, rhythmic alignment is avoided, the number of repetitions of each figure is not fixed). The resulting sound evokes the poetry of the desert, with the almost immaterial fineness of sand contributing to the formation of monolithic dunes. In this sound image, the metaphorical relationship of the piano as an autonomous subjectivity is analogically transported into nature: what the individual is to society, the sand is to the dunes.