Scenes from Goethe's Faust – didn't quite hit the heights

Barbican, London
Even a top-class cast cannot hide the unevenness of Schumann’s at-times beautiful, strange choral work Though it’s been pretty well represented on disc, with Britten, Abbado and Harnoncourt among the conductors who’ve recorded it, Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust remains a rarity in the concert hall. In recent years, the other evening-long Schumann choral work Das Paradies und die Peri has been much easier to hear live, but the London Symphony