Music beyond measure. "Médusa", François-Bernard Mâche's tribute to his home town.
Permanence of the musical myth.
When music no longer speaks only to our feelings or emotions, but to a distant, rediscovered memory.

A moving minerality structured by an insistent transparency of which "Médusa" is the paradigm. Commissioned by the city of Clermont, this piano piece, luminous in its perceptive relationships, complex in its designs, feeds its own contestations. A symbol of a city with a stony gaze that shrouds the harshness of its passions in distance, the persevering repetitiveness of the initial motif gives way to the primacy of a secret melody that ends up imposing its tutelary aura. "Medusa", a magma fountain: Pierre Courthiade unlocks its thaumaturgical virtues with a consummate science of colour.

                 Roland Duclos, La Montagne, 13 or 14 June 2005

The child prodigy of Clermont, who succeeded Iannis Xénakis at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, dedicated Medusa, a work for piano premiered during this festival, to the city that is so dear to him.

                               La Montagne (?) 13 or 14 June 2005