The London Symphony Orchestra began a new year at the Barbican with a glimpse into what, if the persistent rumours are to be believed, the future might hold for it – a concert conducted by Simon Rattle. It was the first of four programmes that Rattle will give with the orchestra over the next six months, and consisted of one work, Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri.

The secular oratorio, based on an episode from Thomas Moore’s epic poem Lalla Rookh, has been a Rattle favourite for a decade now. It was he who conducted the last performance in London, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in 2007, and has performed it since then with the Berlin Philharmonic too, joining the select band of conductors – Elder, Harnoncourt and Norrington – who have championed the score in recent times.

The text and the story it tells, about the angelic spirit who is expelled from heaven for some unrevealed transgression and must roam the world to seek out what is dearest to God before she can be readmitted, is pure romantic sentimentality, but as Rattle’s performance showed, Schumann’s concept, pitched somewhere between opera, oratorio and orchestral song cycle, is totally original. The score may get more conventional and formulaic as the story becomes more sanctimonious, but the best of it is out of the top drawer. There are echoes of Schumann’s symphonic writing and persistently of his Lieder, but some parts, such as the vividly depicted battle scene with which the first of the three parts ends, or the glittering scherzo-like number for the Peri and the chorus in the second, are unlike anything else in his output.

The LSO seemed to be on its best behaviour here, keen to impress its potential new music director, and the refinement of the strings and especially the tactfulness of the brass showed what the orchestra is still capable of when playing for a conductor who actually cares about the sound it is making. With the London Symphony Chorus on its most alert form too, the performance had tremendous presence.

Sally Matthews seems to have made the role of the Peri a speciality in recent times, and what her performance lacked in verbal definition, it more than made up in fervour and sheer stamina. Mark Padmore was a model of clarity as the narrator, Bernarda Fink her usual unfussy, perfectly poised self as the Angel, while having Kate Royal, Andrew Staples and Florian Boesch (spellbinding in his aria at the beginning of the third part) as the other soloists made for a luxury lineup.

Andrew Clements

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