Imagine a work by Mozart such as the Requiem, ignored and unplayed until now because it was written while he was ill. Or Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, disregarded in spite of its merits because he composed it while he was totally deaf. We have a comparable situation concerning a number of compositions by Robert Schumann. As his mental state declined, the works written during those years were kept from the public or even destroyed. His wife Clara, Johannes Brahms and Joseph Joachim acted out of a misguided sense of respect. Inevitably, posterity’s judgement has resulted in a preference for a relative few of Schumann’s works. A significant portion of his output – his choral works, oratorios, the Requiem, the Missa Sacra, his opera Genoveva and all of the late works composed from 1852 onwards – has suffered nearly universal neglect.
Couple this to the pejorative critical opinions that have accrued historically: Schumann was a poor orchestrator, many of his instrumental and symphonic pieces sound too dense, his later works are too strange due to his mental instability, and inevitably there has been a deleterious effect upon performances of his music. In the 20th century, Das Paradies und die Peri, composed in 1842 – 43, fell victim to the malignant critical aura surrounding some of Schumann’s work. It is only now that this beautiful and progressive piece is enjoying belated recognition. Clara Schumann wrote “I believe it is the finest thing he has ever written.” It is certainly the most lovely and moving of all of Schumann’s vocal works.
Nominally considered an oratorio, it is more properly described as a “lyrical adventure story”. It is based on the eastern epic Lalla Rookh by the Irish poet Thomas Moore, which was a bestseller that Schumann read as a child. In Persian mythology, a Peri is akin to a fairy. In this tale, it is a child produced by the union of a fallen angel and a human female. Considered “impure”, the Peri cannot be admitted to Paradise. The gatekeeper is soon moved by the Peri’s longing for bliss, saying he will admit her if she is washed free of all sin. What he neglects to tell her is the nature of the offering needed to achieve this cleansing. Her worldwide search for this heavenly gift takes us to exotic places such as India, Africa, Egypt, ancient Syria and the banks of the River Jordan. With a poetic libretto written by Schumann and his friend Emil Flechsig that is set to music of spare, delicate beauty, Paradise and the Peri premiered in Leipzig on 4th December 1843, and was a triumph that was performed more than fifty times during Schumann’s lifetime.
This performance emphasizes the sheer luminous beauty of the work, with choral singing of an almost diaphanous delicacy that is gently draped over Schumann’s elegant orchestral score. Both orchestra and chorus of the Bayerischen Rundfunks are superb, singing and playing with a rapt awareness of the fairy-tale origins of this poignant story. Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts as if Paradise and the Peri has always enjoyed the status of a masterpiece. The soloists sing with a consistently lovely tone and deep emotion, especially soprano Dorothea Roschmann as Peri and contralto Bernarda Fink as the Angel. Both singers are profoundly moving even as they offer us a glimpse of perfect beauty. This is an exemplary performance of an unjustly neglected masterwork. The sound of this multichannel SACD is warm, exquisitely detailed and spacious, with an ample sound field. The voices are never overwhelmed by the instruments, and are always allowed to bloom properly. The SACD stereo loses some space, but in all other respects sounds equally splendid.
– – Mike Birman
