Mâche's Eridan, a work that is both vehement and mischievous, won over the audience

Mâche's Eridan has a didactic character from the outset: the first violin enunciates a furious succession of repeated notes in the low register, the second violin imitates it in canon, then the viola and cello join in. Almost the entire work is made up of models and imitations skilfully interwoven, sometimes with an almost tragic vehemence, sometimes with a mischievousness that brings a knowing smile to the listener's face: it could therefore have no content other than brilliant craftsmanship; yet the miracle of these systems, which follow one another and combine, is that they produce a radiance and energy capable of making the cold reason from which they are derived boil over. This is an outstanding work, 'public' in the best sense of the word, and one that could quickly achieve the distribution and success it deserves.

                                    Gérard Condé Le Monde 21 January 1987 

 Quatuor Arditti CD Montaigne 782002 (Choc)

Brilliantly crafted but almost didactic in character, the Éridan Quartet (1986) by François-Bernard Mâche (b. 1935), despite the cold naturalism that governs its conception, expresses with real joy the exaltation of an otherwise conclusive and nothing less than prolix proposition. Here too, the Arditti triumph in virtuosity and probity.

Patrick Szersnovicz, Le Monde de la Musique n°149 November 1991

The two most impressive objects are...and Éridan, François-Bernard Mâche's quartet...[it] concentrates a beautiful energy that an almost minimal pulse allows to flow.

                                  Christian Leblé Libération 5-6 October 1991