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Richard FLURY (1896-1967)
Der magische Spiegel - Ballet in three scenes (1954) [52:34]
Kleine Ballettmusik (1925-26) [12:51]
Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra/Paul Mann
rec. 2019, Nuremberg
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0552 [65:23]

For many years it was through the agencies of Gallo and MGB that the orchestral music of Swiss composer Richard Flury stood any chance of being recorded and heard. No longer. As to his life story then you need look no further than Chris Walton’s Richard Flury - The Life and Music of a Swiss Romantic (2017). There Mr Walton does for Flury what he has already done for Flury’s fellow Swiss Othmar Schoeck: a glittering and substantial ‘life and music’ handbook that ranks with Lewis Foreman’s Bax volume.

Flury’s Der magische Spiegel is a 50-plus minute ballet in three scenes: I: In the Woman’s Chamber; II: In the Laboratory of a Medieval Alchemist and Musician; III: Still in the Woman’s Chamber. The plot hardly signifies but Toccata recount it as “a pantomime tale of flirtation, cuckoldery, magical spells and perdition”. Each episode or dance is separately tracked and the two works here can be accessed over no fewer than 34 tracks.

Flury’s style might approximately be described as in the same bailiwick as Richard Strauss’s Schlagobers and the much-underestimated Souvenirs by Samuel Barber. That said, it is shorter than the Strauss by twenty minutes and longer than the Barber by about half an hour. Flury writes for an inventively deployed chamber orchestra rather than for a fulsomely affluent large-scale orchestra, even if its look and feel is of a much larger body. There’s even a gong in track 27. The whole thing has about it a generous Viennese manner. Try tracks 11 and 14 where a light-footed waltz breezes by. There are many other such instances and a few of sable reflection and gestures towards sentiment (track 21). Flury is valiant to avoiding the potentially deadening influence of strokes such as the use of castanets in tr. 16. Here he courts echoes of Massenet (El Cid) and in the scores of a goodly acreage of composers as revived by Richard Bonynge.

As you may have come to expect if you have had any experience of Flury, the writing is not at all avant-garde. It is light on the palate, bristling with attractive ideas and detailing. Woodwind invention is active and frequent and the solo violin reaches out early on. Its charm is not at all tired and speaks of a love of life and a defiance of then modern-day tropes. If there are tropes, then these glance back to the late nineteenth century.

Flury’s language here is fully developed and is the product of a composer within hailing distance of the age of sixty. We are not looking back to a language adopted by Flury early on and later discarded. No trace of the pattern followed by Elliott Carter in his early accessible works (The Minotaur and Pocahontas - both ballets, and Holiday Overture and Symphony no. 1) written when he was in his thirties.

Kleine Ballettmusik (1925-26) has movement titles: Arabesque; Mélodie; Alla polacca; Valse pastorale; Tambourin and Marche de Kermesse. To all intents and purposes a suite, the music flickers and sighs along. It shows again that Flury’s writing found its firmly rooted centre early on.

The recording, which shows depth and delicacy, is courtesy of Michael Ponder and Adaq Khan. It is fully satisfying, as is the playing and style adopted by Paul Mann and the Nuremberg orchestra.

Richard Flury’s work continues under the active aegis of the Richard Flury Stiftung and his composer son Urs Joseph Flury (b.1941). They must surely be pleased with this disc of first recordings and with its Toccata companion (TOCC0427) the one-act opera, A Florentine Tragedy. For the future let’s hope for more of the symphonies and concertos.

Rob Barnett