Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

Forget the last drop of blood from a dying hero, never mind the final breath of a plague-ridden widow, just find that elusive repentant tear. The Peri, a poor fairy creature from the pages of Thomas Moore's orientally inspired Lalla Rookh, is forbidden to enter paradise until she has atoned for her sin by finding "the gift heaven prefers above all others". That is her, and our, quest in Robert Schumann's only oratorio, Paradise and the Peri, a work he considered to be his most important creation.

Now largely neglected, it enjoyed a rare airing in London last year, and also at New York's Mainly Mozart festival under Gerard Schwarz. The American conductor clearly believes sufficiently in the work to have brought it with him in his first season as music director of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. What it cost the RLPO to put on, I hate to think, with eight soloists and a good few orchestral extras, though admittedly the choir sings for pleasure. And lacking the dramatic qualities of Schumann's opera Genoveva, say, or the originality of his Scenes from Faust, Paradise and the Peri isn't exactly a great crowd-puller.

But since Liverpool City Council has agreed to increase its grant to the orchestra from £100,000 to £800,000 next year, and the now debt-free RLPO has been rather cumbersomely named "Classic FM's orchestra in the north of England", a few artistic adventures don't pose the same sort of knife-edge risk here as they would, until recently, have done.

The engaging freshness of Schwarz's persuasive account pointed up the music's clear and transparent textures, as well as its warmly romantic atmosphere. The colour and continuity of the story owed much to the refined and sensitively shaped orchestral playing, while the choir gave a fleet-footed account of the spritely choruses. Mendelssohn is never far away, especially in the elfin-like chorus of Nile spirits, while Weber also makes his influence felt. Christine Goerke was a touchingly fervent Peri, Wilke te Brummelstroete an expressive Angel, and Donald Kaasch brought an authority and commitment to his not inconsiderable tenor role, while the quartet of secondary soloists made an assured contribution.

If you could stomach the cloying sentimentality of the story, there was more than enough interest in Schumann's delicate scoring, occasionally exotically flavoured sonorities and unselfconscious lyricism to make it an enjoyable one-off musical experience.