This release should be about several things: primarily Simon Rattle’s freshly confirmed artistic relationship with the LSO – this is their first collaboration on the orchestra’s own label – and his continuing to fight the cause of Schumann’s unfashionable secular cantata. Yet the first thing it does, to my ears at least, is raise afresh the question of whether London needs a new concert hall. LSO Live’s engineers have often struggled in the bright, constricted-sounding Barbican Hall, and the engineering on this release is a drawback. The sound is opaque and contained, the singers – the three women in particular – unflatteringly placed in the sonic spotlight.

It’s a real shame, for there’s no hiding either Rattle’s eloquent advocacy of the work or the encouraging signs regarding his rapport with the orchestra, who play superbly for him. Phrases are invariably beautifully turned, and there is evidence of real care having been taken throughout (listen, for example, to the beautifully gauged staccato minims at the beginning of No 9, ‘Die Peri sah Mal der Wande’). There’s a spring in the step of the whole performance that is just what the piece needs. Throughout, the emphasis is on the poetic sincerity and musical invention of Schumann’s score, which manages in large part to redeem the pious mawkishness – and much else besides – that make Thomas Moore’s text rather difficult to swallow.

In terms of tempi, Rattle is broad when required, but is often on the swift side in the faster movements: the martial music in Part 1 (where Harnoncourt is strangely reticent) is full of swagger, while Schumann’s sehr lebhaft markings are certainly always ‘very lively’ as suggested, perhaps rather breathlessly so on occasion. Certainly Sally Matthews’s Peri doesn’t seem to be able to do much more with her joyous finale than keep up. But in truth she never sounds terribly comfortable. Her bright voice, as captured here, comes across as glary and tremulous, and she suffers from comparison with Harnoncourt’s Dorothea Röschmann (particularly in terms of what can be done with the words) and Gardiner’s Barbara Bonney (in terms of sheer vocal purity and allure), let alone the young Karita Matilla on Gerd Albrecht’s sadly unavailable Supraphon set (11/90).

Bernarda Fink, in addition, is captured much better on the Harnoncourt and Gardiner sets. Mark Padmore’s light tenor is eloquent, but the solos seem to call for something a little more heroic and grainy, as offered by Harnoncourt’s Christoph Strehl. The excellent Florian Boesch doesn’t quite offer the supreme eloquence of Christian Gerhaher on the same Sony/BMG set, while the LSO Chorus, although well-drilled by Simon Halsey, just can’t match the professional choirs heard elsewhere in the catalogue.

On disc, then, Das Paradies und die Peri is not that badly served at all. This release has its own merits, and is a valuable record of what was obviously a fine concert performance, as well as of Rattle’s persuasive way with the score. It doesn’t, however, dislodge the front-runners in the catalogue.