The magic that the French composer wove in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice gave his ten-minute orchestral masterpiece a life all of its own, says Tom Service
Here’s a cautionary tale of how one composer’s self-critical brilliance meant he was subsumed by the uncontrollable magical chaos described in the fantastical poem his turned Paul Dukas into a one-hit wonder, most famously as an accompaniment to an animated mouse and the wizard Yen Sid. (Spell that backwards: got it? Dis Ney, in the famous sequence in Disney’s film .)
