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Orchestra's "Das Paradies und die Peri' (1st
Tom Purdom
The flamboyant Sir Simon reveals his gentler side
TOM PURDOM
I attended the Orchestra’s opening performance of Das Paradies und die Peri with a friend who sings in local choral groups, and she concluded she wouldn’t want to sing for Simon Rattle. This conductor was far too busy, in her opinion. Rattle’s showy gestures may look dramatic from the audience’s viewpoint, she said, but they can confuse and distract the singers.
I too was taken aback when Rattle waved his hand in the face of the chief soprano soloist as he signaled something to concertmaster David Kim. He did it several times, in fact.
My main concern as I waited for the opening notes stemmed from my memories of a performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony that Rattle conducted several years ago, when he was being touted as a potential successor to Wolfgang Sawallisch. Rattle did indeed produce a titanic battering ram climax, just as Mahler intended, but only after hurrying through the movements that demand a sensitive appreciation of the less dramatic emotions.
Rattle was clearly in his element when he conducted the thumping war music in the first section of Das Paradies. But I can’t complain about the way he handled the somber passage in the second section that depicts a landscape ravaged by plague. And that was preceded by some lovely, scene-painting music as the spirits of the Nile greet the spirit who is the central character of the story.
An angel in search of gifts
The plot of Das Paradies und die Peri will look familiar to anyone who has ever been exposed to The Littlest Angel or The Little Drummer Boy. The Peri is a winged spirit produced by an affair between a mortal and a fallen angel. She enjoys all the spectacles and marvels of Creation, but she wants something more: to enter Paradise and join the angels who bask in the Creator’s presence. She can only pass through the gates, she is told, if she brings the proper gift. So the Peri sets out on her quest.
Her first gift is a drop of blood taken from a dying warrior— an event that sets off a moving chorus that the super-titles translated as “Sacred is the blood shed courageously for freedom.” The gift is accepted but merely unlocks the first gate. The Peri must make the traditional three tries before she succeeds.
Das Paradies may resemble some of our standard Christmas confections, but it takes place in an Eastern and Muslim setting. In Schumann’s day, such a setting would have been fashionably exotic. In our time, it lends the oratorio interesting nuances. One of Schumann’s best choruses resembles the light, dancing music that Handel and Bach used to depict Jesus’s triumphant Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem—but here the subject is the ascent of the stairs that lead to Allah’s throne.
A work long forgotten
Schumann wrote the oratorio in 1843, but this was its first Philadelphia performance. When I chatted with another local music critic during the intermission, both of us confessed we hadn’t even known the piece existed. Das Paradies was a big hit in its time, but it seems to have lost its appeal as the public mood progressed toward the more jaundiced attitudes of the 20th Century.
The second section is an exercise in 19th-Century Teutonic sentimentality that looks absurd to a modern mind. That section ends, on the other hand, with a serenely beautiful passage for soprano and chorus. Schumann’s music transforms the story line into a sonic poem that bridges the gap between his time and ours.
The soloists’ burden
Schumann made one serious error. He assigned most of the grand, celebratory climax to the lead soprano soloist. He included a brief chorus near the end, but Heidi Grant Murphy had to do most of the job by herself. She sang with joy and technical deftness, but she couldn’t fill Verizon Hall with the kind of force a finale requires. I don’t think many sopranos could (with or without a conductor fluttering his hand in front of them).
The soloists who most impressed me were mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink and British tenor Mark Padmore. Fink managed to score even though she had to sing the Angel’s lines from behind the orchestra. Padmore mustered all the authority the part of the narrator demanded, paired with a notable ability to move between the powerful and the lyrical.
Ever since I started writing about music 19 years ago, I’ve been impressed by the fact that flamboyant performers who bounce all over the stage really do excite a big segment of the public. Das Paradies und die Peri attracted sellout audiences largely, I assume, because Sir Simon was conducting. In this case, his fans got their money’s worth. Overall, their hero did the one thing a conductor is supposed to do. They came to see Rattle, but they heard Schumann.
To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.
To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here.
TOM PURDOM
I attended the Orchestra’s opening performance of Das Paradies und die Peri with a friend who sings in local choral groups, and she concluded she wouldn’t want to sing for Simon Rattle. This conductor was far too busy, in her opinion. Rattle’s showy gestures may look dramatic from the audience’s viewpoint, she said, but they can confuse and distract the singers.
I too was taken aback when Rattle waved his hand in the face of the chief soprano soloist as he signaled something to concertmaster David Kim. He did it several times, in fact.
My main concern as I waited for the opening notes stemmed from my memories of a performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony that Rattle conducted several years ago, when he was being touted as a potential successor to Wolfgang Sawallisch. Rattle did indeed produce a titanic battering ram climax, just as Mahler intended, but only after hurrying through the movements that demand a sensitive appreciation of the less dramatic emotions.
Rattle was clearly in his element when he conducted the thumping war music in the first section of Das Paradies. But I can’t complain about the way he handled the somber passage in the second section that depicts a landscape ravaged by plague. And that was preceded by some lovely, scene-painting music as the spirits of the Nile greet the spirit who is the central character of the story.
An angel in search of gifts
The plot of Das Paradies und die Peri will look familiar to anyone who has ever been exposed to The Littlest Angel or The Little Drummer Boy. The Peri is a winged spirit produced by an affair between a mortal and a fallen angel. She enjoys all the spectacles and marvels of Creation, but she wants something more: to enter Paradise and join the angels who bask in the Creator’s presence. She can only pass through the gates, she is told, if she brings the proper gift. So the Peri sets out on her quest.
Her first gift is a drop of blood taken from a dying warrior— an event that sets off a moving chorus that the super-titles translated as “Sacred is the blood shed courageously for freedom.” The gift is accepted but merely unlocks the first gate. The Peri must make the traditional three tries before she succeeds.
Das Paradies may resemble some of our standard Christmas confections, but it takes place in an Eastern and Muslim setting. In Schumann’s day, such a setting would have been fashionably exotic. In our time, it lends the oratorio interesting nuances. One of Schumann’s best choruses resembles the light, dancing music that Handel and Bach used to depict Jesus’s triumphant Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem—but here the subject is the ascent of the stairs that lead to Allah’s throne.
A work long forgotten
Schumann wrote the oratorio in 1843, but this was its first Philadelphia performance. When I chatted with another local music critic during the intermission, both of us confessed we hadn’t even known the piece existed. Das Paradies was a big hit in its time, but it seems to have lost its appeal as the public mood progressed toward the more jaundiced attitudes of the 20th Century.
The second section is an exercise in 19th-Century Teutonic sentimentality that looks absurd to a modern mind. That section ends, on the other hand, with a serenely beautiful passage for soprano and chorus. Schumann’s music transforms the story line into a sonic poem that bridges the gap between his time and ours.
The soloists’ burden
Schumann made one serious error. He assigned most of the grand, celebratory climax to the lead soprano soloist. He included a brief chorus near the end, but Heidi Grant Murphy had to do most of the job by herself. She sang with joy and technical deftness, but she couldn’t fill Verizon Hall with the kind of force a finale requires. I don’t think many sopranos could (with or without a conductor fluttering his hand in front of them).
The soloists who most impressed me were mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink and British tenor Mark Padmore. Fink managed to score even though she had to sing the Angel’s lines from behind the orchestra. Padmore mustered all the authority the part of the narrator demanded, paired with a notable ability to move between the powerful and the lyrical.
Ever since I started writing about music 19 years ago, I’ve been impressed by the fact that flamboyant performers who bounce all over the stage really do excite a big segment of the public. Das Paradies und die Peri attracted sellout audiences largely, I assume, because Sir Simon was conducting. In this case, his fans got their money’s worth. Overall, their hero did the one thing a conductor is supposed to do. They came to see Rattle, but they heard Schumann.
To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.
To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here.
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