Mozart's The Magic Flute as you have rarely heard it: stripped of voices, stage and orchestra, yet losing none of it's magic. Ars Antiqua Austria and Gunar Letzbor bring to life a remarkable historical string quartet arrangement preserved in the archives of Kremsmunster Abbey. From the famous overture and Papageno's Der Vogelfanger bin ich ja to the Queen of the Night's Der Holle Rache..., Mozart's melodies emerge in an intimate new guise, distilled into exactly sixty minutes of music.Far from being a mere reduction of the opera, this anonymous arrangement reveals an imaginative and highly skilled hand, transforming Mozart's score into a richly sonorous work for four string instruments. In returning as closely as possible to the surviving source material, Ars Antiqua Austria opens a window onto the vibrant musical culture of Mozart's time, when arrangements allowed great operas and symphonies to travel far beyond the major musical centres. The result is both historical rediscovery and living music: familiar melodies heard afresh, with an immediacy, transparency and intimacy all their own.