François-Bernard Mâche named his piece Ugarit, an anagram of the instrument's name. With its exacting virtuosity, it perhaps even found the most fiery Hispanic accents.

                   M.M. Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace, May 30, 2000

Musiques démesurées. Shared tribute to François-Bernard Mâche
The echo of a resurrected past

Passionate, committed performers, exceptional listening skills! Can a composer dream of anything better? More than a tribute with a whiff of mothballs, François-Bernard Mâche's concert at the Chabrier auditorium on Saturday evening was an authentic shared experience. His music does not demand - in the sense that it needs our full attention to be heard - this degree of intensity to serve it and this equal receptivity: it imposes itself because it is alive. Alive, no doubt, within us, before it was written.
It finds indigenous resonances. Mâche lets us hear that part of ourselves waiting to be revealed. He awakens those obscure layers of our innermost being, reconciling us with that dimension of coherent mystery that inhabits us; with that living matter, that flesh that belongs to us, that lymph that nourishes and builds us because it is music.
With Ugarit, Jean-Pierre Billet steers the course with the persuasiveness of an unyielding ostinato, right up to the sudden syncopations that could signal doubt or stupor. Unless, paradoxically, these brief moments of apnoea spell out the flight of a time without beginning or end. The guitarist is clearly an insider. Mâche's writing calls for these vigilant readings, sharpened by the desire and thirst for knowledge.

               Roland Duclos, Centre France La Montagne June 12, 2005