Robert Schumann: Paradise and the Peri, op. 50

Klára Kolonits soprano
Ágnes Szalai soprano
Dorottya Láng alto
Szabolcs Brickner tenor
István Kovács bass

Hungarian National Choir (choirmaster: Csaba Somos)
Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor: Attilio Tomasello

“I finished Paradise and the Peri last Friday, my greatest work, and I hope also my best,” wrote Schumann to a friend in 1843. “I think of heaven with a heart full of gratitude, which gave me strength and kept me alert as I worked. […] I must have told you about it, but if I haven’t, try to obtain it: it was practically made for music. The whole idea is so poetic, so pure, that it filled me entirely with enthusiasm.” This will be a chance for the audience of the Hungarian National Choir and the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra to hear this rarely performed work, conducted by an excellent Italian conductor and sung by leading Hungarian soloists.

Schumann’s work is a unique oddity of the music literature. Even its genre is unusual: as an idyll-oratorio, it is practically the sole successor to Haydn’s masterpiece The Seasons. It is a secular composition with an overall tone that is lyrical in nature, and with a seemingly mundane subject: the search for happiness.

The story is based on one of the poems from Thomas Moore’s 1817 collection of fairy tales, Lalla Rookh, in a form similar to the storytelling of The Arabian Nights. The peri, an expelled and repentant angel, waits before the gates of heaven in the hope of forgiveness. The condition for readmittance? The peri must bring the gift that is dearest to heaven. Neither the last drop of blood from a soldier fighting for his homeland nor the final breath of a woman in love are sufficient, but redemption is finally earned with tears of sincere repentence.

Drawn to the exotic, Schumann did not choose the path of plot action to develop the story. The composer was a master at depicting psychological states, and the work recalls his songs, symphonies, choral works and even string chamber music, with the dense, yet translucent texture that is so uniquely characteristic of the artists of the Romantic period. Increasing the significance of this concert is the fact that this will be the first time in the Hungarian National Choir’s history that it interprets Schumann’s oratorio.