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Flury: The Magic Mirror & Little Ballet Music
Der magische Spiegel (‘The Magic Mirror’), a 1954 ballet by the Swiss composer Richard Flury (1896–1967), tells a pantomime tale of flirtation, cuckoldry, magical spells and perdition – but this is no puritanical morality play: using the limited resources of a chamber orchestra to surprisingly full-bodied effect, Flury conjures up a delightful sequence of dances – a generous number of waltzes, with a czardas, a bolero and more – that skip past in good-humored succession. And behind its innocent title, the Little Ballet Music of thirty years earlier hides a buoyant dance-suite, scored with a feeling for color that would have gone down well in Hollywood. This recording was made by the team – Paul Mann and the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra – responsible for a ‘pulsating’ recording of Richard Flury’s one-act opera Eine florentinische Tragödie (TOCC 0427).