Search - Recorded Sound, Robert Schumann, Joshard Daus :: Das Paradies Und Die Peri

In his "year of songs," 1840, Robert Schumann composed no fewer than 138 songs, and in the next year created his youthful Spring Symphony (No. 1). In the same year Schumann yearned for an exotic subject to be set to music. When Schumann's former companion in joy and sorrow, Emil Flechsig, showed him his libretto Das Paradies und die Peri, created after Thomas Moore's oriental epos Lalla Rookh, Schumann at once fell for the material. The composer was attracted magically by the image of purity, delicacy, and Madonna-like nature of the Peri, coupled with a fairy-tale magic world of the Orient. In Das Paradies und die Peri, Schumann weaves Western worship of the Virgin Mary and the idea of redemption often brought forward during the time of the nineteenth century into an exotically transfigured world of elves. A native of Hamburg, Joshard Daus began a close collaboration with the legendary conductor Sergiu Celibidache in 1986. This led him to the post of choir director at the Munich Philharmonic from 1990-1993. Daus translated his ideals into reality with the founding and directorship of the EuropaChorAkademie starting in 1997. The Akademie arose out of a collaboration between the Johannes Gutenberg University and the Hochschule Bremen. As a forum for young European musicians, an educational institution, and a concert choir, the EuropaChorAkademie constitutes the ideal platform for working on choral symphonic music in its most demanding forms. The Southwest German Chamber Orchestra, Pforzheim, has brought out over 150 records and CDs since its founding in 1950.