Christoph von Dohnányi, Wiener Philharmoniker - Richard Strauss: Salome (1995)

Christoph von Dohnanyi is one of those conductors, like Wolfgang Sawallisch, Rafael Kubelik and Josef Keilberth, who were relatively ignored by the journalist school of music critics and later, usually after they are dead, lauded to the skies as undiscovered geniuses of the podium. Well, Maestro Dohnanyi is alive and well and with us and still conducting, mostly at the Zurich opera, and it is a good thing that his performances are being filmed, if not recorded, for posterity because he is a giant of the operatic podium, especially in the operas of Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner. He made his name decades ago as THE conductor of Alban Berg's two towering masterpieces, Wozzeck and Lulu, both recorded with his, then, wife, the legendary Anja Silja, who is also one of the great Salomes in the history of operatic performance. So Dohnanyi is well steeped in this opera. I would love to have been a fly on the wall during his conversations with Silja about this and other operas they performed together all over the world in the mid 20th century. There is a recording of the final scene from Salome with Silja and Dohnanyi conducting, also in Vienna as in this recording, coupled with the Lulu suite. It's worth looking for! Silja was not popular with the recording companies because 1) she wasn't Birgit Nilsson, the old story and 2) her voice was not ingratiating as a rule to the microphones. She was always recorded to best effect in live performances with the full acoustic of houses like Bayreuth and Vienna within the context of a dramatic performance.

Catherine Malfitano was Dohnanyi's Salome at the time of this recording. She had made some classic recordings in lighter roles, the famous Roméo et Juliétte by Gounod with Alfredo Kraus, conducted by Michel Plasson, is now only available at astronomical prices. She moved from those light lyric parts to Tosca, then Fidelio etc and finally ending her career, in San Francisco for all intents and purposes, as Kundry! In between she made quite a reputation as an outstanding Salome. This is her finest hour on record as a full blown dramatic soprano.

Malfitano is in no way 'stressed' by this role, at least on recording. I remember hearing (and taping off air) her performance of Salome in 1995 at the Metropolitan opera, conducted by Donald Runnicles, a recording that the Met would do well to release!, and noticing no problems at all with her voice carrying over that raging orchestra in that huge opera house. One thing Malfitano was was a very intelligent singer who knew her limits though she pressed herself beyond the known envelope of comfort and delivered some amazing performances throughout her long career, often challenging conventional wisdom and baffling her detractors. This recording of Salome is a triumphant vindication of this great singer's judgment and Dohnanyi's and Decca's faith in her capabilities to deliver one of the most thrilling Salomes on record. She lacks only the last ounce of orgasmic ecstasy in the final phrases, when compared to Birgit Nilsson and Hildegard Behrens, for instance, but this does not mitigate her great performance. Her voice is attractive, if not consistently beautiful, as Behrens's is for Karajan or even Studer for Sinopoli, but she is every ounce the spoiled willful princess and delivers about the most all around convincing personification of this complex creature on recording. She sounds young and nubile and thoughtful, and wildly over-sexed. Where Nilsson's gale-force singing makes her girl sound like more like a gorgon, but oh so thrilling!

Bryn Terfel recorded this role twice, this being the second following his fine interpretation for Sinopoli four years earlier in Berlin (DGG). For Dohnanyi he is even more sensitive and moving, less stentorian in the Eberhard Wächter mold (Solti). His solemn admonishment to Salome to 'Kneel down on the shore of the sea, and call unto Him..." is unusually moving, toning his beautiful voice down to pianissimo, something rarely done in this role.

Kenneth Riegel and Hanna Schwarz are totally satisfying and interestingly multi-faceted characters in roles that too often go for little beyond hectoring hysteria and shrewish screaming.

Throughout Dohnanyi accompanies his cast in a prismatic and nuanced performance. The Dance of the Seven Veils is always a problem to be surmounted. Usually unsuccessfully no matter how great the rest of the performance. Dohnanyi treats it in an almost Anton von Webern-ish manner, as a series of minute statements sown together with the most tenuous and silken filigree. The little violin solos come and go like fireflies, no grand-standing or trying to make a statement, they are simply a part of the overall fabric of this gossamer piece of music that more often comes off as bombastic kitsch.

My first Salome recording was, no surprise, Birgit Nilsson with Solti. I came to expect a certain volcanic vocalism in this part. Then Karajan and Hildegard Behrens opened my ears to the possibilities of subtlety in this opera.

The Decca sound for Dohnanyi is spectacular. Natural and full, though Malfitano is clearly very closely miked in the final scene and the orchestra seems a tad recessed but no less effective for that.

If you are just learning Strauss's great game-changing opera this is a fine first choice. In a way I wish I had had a more subtle recording to learn this opera by than Solti's. It has taken me decades to hear this score without Nilsson and Wächter's gargantuan performances under Solti's titanic direction and Decca's Technorama engineering. The only recent (post Solti/Karajan) recording that I rate higher than Dohnanyi's is Michael Schønwandt's from Copenhagen in 1996, on Chandos, with an amazing heroine in Inga Nielsen and the best supporting cast since Solti's way back when.