Throughout his adult life, Robert Schu­mann (1810 - 1856) struggled against a fear of men­tal dis­in­teg­ra­tion. His Sym­phony No. 2 in C Op. 61 was writ­ten in 1845 while he was re­cov­er­ing from a break­down. With its com­bin­a­tion of power and in­tim­ate lyr­i­cism, this mu­sic­al com­pos­i­tion is an il­lus­tra­tion of the con­flict between his cre­at­ive demons, the hero­ic, high-spir­ited ‘Florest­an’, and the brood­ing, po­et­ic ‘Eu­se­bi­us’.

Fo­cus­ing on the Second Sym­phony, this film uses a dy­nam­ic inter-ac­tion between re- hears­al foot­age and dram­at­ised se­quences to give a pen­et­rat­ing in­sight in­to the com­poser’s com­plex and frac­tured geni­us.

Ro­ger Nor­ring­ton is renowned for his his­tor­ic­ally in­formed ap­proach to clas­sic­al mu­sic per­for-mance. "Robert`s Res­cue" finds him in Salzburg to re­hearse and per­form the Sym-phony No. 2 with the Cam­erata Salzburg, one of Europe’s lead­ing cham­ber or­ches­tras. Snatch­ing some rest be­fore the even­ing’s con­cert, he is aware of an ar­gu­ment in pro­gress in the ad­join­ing hotel room. He falls asleep only to awake in an­oth­er real­ity, trans­formed in­to Mas­ter Raro – the me­di­at­or between Florest­an and Eu­se­bi­us, who are at odds over the com­pos­i­tion of the Second Sym­phony. Nor­ring­ton’s re­hears­als with the Cam­erata Salzburg and his tribu­la­tions as Mas­ter Raro, are skil­fully woven to­geth­er in this highly ori­gin­al and visu­ally dis­tin­guish­ing mu­sic film by Andy Som­mer, writ­ten and ed­ited by Marco Cap­albo. Si­mon Cal­low, well known for his roles in fea­tures such as "Amadeus", "Four Wed­dings and a Fu­ner­al" and "Shakespeare in Love", por­trays Florest­an and Eu­se­bi­us.