Salome, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - a partnership in a million

A Salome without the head of John the Baptist is nothing new: several directors have perversely decided they could do without in recent productions. In concert, the illusion needs the charismatic force of a great soprano and conductor. We got that at the Proms 11 years ago with Nina Stemme and Donald Runnicles. Now Asmik Grigorian, even more the ideal as the obsessive teenage princess, crowns the end of a season that has been a total triumph for Pappano and his London Symphony Orchestra,

I've never bought the line that Richard Strauss's incredible 1905 psychodrama to most of Oscar Wilde's text is just a tone poem with voices overlying. It's music-drama neurasthenically alert to every detail of the action and reaction, and if the production is similarly fine-tuned, the staging adds atmosphere and horror in the way that a concert performance can never quite match. This one had scores for all but some of the smaller roles, and Grigorian kept eyes on hers for some of the time, not often looking directly at the object of her infatuation (Grigorian pictured below with Michael Volle). Maybe the characterisation was deliberate: an ice-cold manipulator at odds with the gorgeous vocal timbre. You felt at times, though, that this might be a recording session (unfathomably, the results of the two performances will not appear on LSO Live). Yet every phrase that Grigorian delivered, with an upper register she could make either soft and limpid in guile or trumpet-like in determination, added up to a stunning interpretation. The hallucinatory best came last: the consummation of Salome's desire to kiss the head in her Liebestod or Liebesverklarung (transfiguration through love, as Wagner preferred Isolde's final solo to be called) allowed her to unleash hair-raising full force. Even the dissonant orchestral crunch just after it couldn't surpass the impact. 

Everyone in a big cast fulfilled the ideal, too, perfectly together with Pappano's collective or individual players (another reason for regret that this wasn't recorded). Michael Volle is now a grizzled veteran, but few bass-baritones could unleash as much in Jokanaan's torrent of hate and terror that do so much to turn Salome's wits, The Herods played most off the score. As so often, we had a character artist, Wolfgang Ablinger-Speerhacke, rather than a Heldentenor as Herod, but Pappano made sure the orchestra covered any strain, and the vivid diction was impeccable. Violeta Urmana, Lithuanian born like Grigorian, turned on not only maximum monster mother but also quite a few of those top notes which made her one of the leading Isoldes and Kundrys (Ablinger-Speerhacke and Urmana pictured below with the Five Jews – James Kryshak, Michael J Scott, Aled Hall, Oliver Johnston and Jeremy White). Goosebumps came at the start not only with the rising, moonstruck clarinet but also with the space Pappano gave glorious mezzo Niamh O'Sullivan as the Page who warns soldier Narraboth of trouble ahead; and while you might expect more of a lighter lyric tenor for the captain, John Findon matched promise of a bright Wagnerian future with absolute focus. Of the superlative supporting cast – and the bickering rumpus of the Five Jews was clearer than I've ever heard it – I mention only Liam James Karai (First Nazarene), Redmond Sanders (Cappadocian) and Hannah McKay (A Slave) because this was my first hearing of other singers with a bright future.

Some Salomes sound like what Strauss said he wanted, "fairy music by Mendelssohn", but Pappano never had to dial down the full orchestra since every voice could be heard above, or with, it. The Dance was super-sensual, led by oboist Olivier Stankiewicz, and the heckelphone or bass oboe within his family, played by John McDougall, was always spine-tinglingly audible. Trumpets set off magnesium flares where necessary, and horns brayed horribly. It was a pleasure to see the sounds, as it were: watching how the eerie effects Strauss often gets from the two harps (Lucy Wakeford and Fiona Clifton-Walker) is achieved, the way that he spreads the creepy effect of the pinched high double-bass note as Salome awaits the execution from the principal to three other players. And the pace? Simply perfect; nothing to fault. The audience reaction, inevitably, was an instant standing ovation, just as when Grigorian sang the three main soprano roles in Puccini's Il trittico in Paris earlier this summer. Pappano's first official season as the LSO's Chief Conductor began with three concerts all given five stars by three different reviewers on theartsdesk. It ends the same way, with a single performance I only wish I'd heard twice.

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