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Chandos4
Strauss: Salome
Malin Byström, soprano; Katarina Dalayman, mezzo-soprano; Gerhard Siegel and Bror Magnus Tødenes, tenors; Johan Reuter, baritone; Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra; Edward Gardner, conductor
Chandos, 2025
The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra’s trip to the Edinburgh Festival in 2022 included a strongly-cast concert version of Richard Strauss’s Salome which was recorded and has now been issued on SACD by Chandos.
It’s very good. Malin Byström, in the title role, is a powerful presence who can be subtle, even lyrical, where needed—such as in the wheedling discussion with Herod over her “reward.” Johan Reuter is rock-solid as Jochanaan and the recording engineers have managed to differentiate the sound between his cistern location versus “the outside” reasonably well. The chemistry between Byström and Reuter is well communicated, with the latter also showing considerable lyricism.
Herod is sung by Gerhard Siegel with Katharina Dalayman as his wife, Herodias. Both sound suitably old and a bit neurotic without descending into caricature-level singing. It’s properly musical. The multiple minor roles are done well, especially the Narraboth of Bror Magnus Tødenes whose sound telegraphs his infatuation with Salome appropriately.
The pivotal scene where Salome tries to seduce Jochanaan—“Jochanaan! Ich bin verliebt in deinen Leib” (“Jochanaan! I am in love with your body”)—is provocatively overripe. This builds insidiously to “Ich will deinen Mund küssen, Jochanaan” (“I want to kiss your mouth, Jochanaan”), perhaps the most decadently erotic moment in the whole of opera unless one prefers the necrophiliac “Ah! Ich habe deinen Mund geküßt, Jochanaan” (“Ah! I have kissed your mouth, Jochanaan”) sung to the saint’s decapitated head. Nobody is holding back here!
Good as the singing is, it is the orchestra and conductor, Edward Gardner, who steal the show. That’s becoming a pattern. They excel here as they did in their 2020 recording of Peter Grimes, also on Chandos. Here, the orchestral sound is both grand and detailed and at times quite sinister. There’s great delicacy during the “Dance of the Seven Veils” and palpable tension in its aftermath, when Salome asks for the head of John the Baptist.
That said, for the purposes of this review, I listened to standard CD quality digital files which sound slightly compressed and muddied. Based on experience with other recent Chandos efforts I would expect the SACD or even the 96kHz/24bit options to sound much better, and there’s Dolby Atmos available for people who have gone that route.
To summarize, it’s another first-class opera recording from Edward Gardner and the Bergen forces but don’t waste the recording engineer’s excellent work. Listen to it in the highest-resolution version you can.
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