Bruno Serrou: After the river, here comes the mouth. In L'Estuaire du temps, you tackle the concerto genre, but with an unlikely instrument: a sampler.

François-Bernard Mâche: I'd hardly ever approached the concerto genre, which had as bad a reputation as opera. Until one day I said to myself "I'm going to write a concerto but, instead of a traditional solo instrument, I'm going to consider the sampler as an instrument with a solo keyboardist. L'Estuaire du temps is therefore a concerto for sampler and orchestra in three movements, the central piece being more contemplative than the other two, in keeping with the classical tradition. But that's where the similarities end. The sampler is first and foremost an instrument that plays with waves, ebbing and flowing, like a sea that is both imaginary and extremely realistic. In fact, it's not a score but a tablature. There is no visible connection between the note played and what you hear: you can play a C 3 and hear a much lower, indeterminate sound. In other passages, I make the keyboard speak, as I did in Kengir, for example, where my own voice articulates one syllable per key, forming words when the performer plays several keys in succession. In L'Estuaire du temps, there are passages spoken in more or less identifiable languages. These include Xhosa, the click language I used in Korwar, ancient Armenian provided by an Armenian with a thorough knowledge of his culture, Kawi and Lithuanian, a language that is obviously understandable by a fairly large population but whose very distinctive sound appealed to me. As well as noises and syllables, the sampler plays all sorts of instruments that would be impossible to play in an orchestra, such as certain bells that produce particular sounds.
 
Bruno Serrou: Why the title L'Estuaire du temps?

François-Bernard Mâche: Imagination allows us to lose the notion of time and move into the timeless or eternal. One of the functions of music is also to use time to make us forget it. Everyone has experienced this when, for example, they look at their watch at the end of a piece that seemed to last an infinite amount of time but in truth only lasted about ten minutes. Music is an amplifier that overturns the ordinary conception of time.