This Erika Sunnegårdh aria and song showcase disc is not for the unconverted. Though the programming is ambitious, her colleagues are the credible Will Humburg leading the Malmö Symphony Orchestra and the packaging is full of glam photos and full text translations, the disc is still best parsed by those who know Sunnegårdh’s considerable stage charisma, the conceptual integrity of her interpretations and her expansive, sometimes unruly tone. Her Gwyneth Jones vibrato is not for the faint of heart. But even if the voice had been caught here with less mileage, Sunnegårdh isn’t the kind of singer who aspires to be tame.

Beginning the disc with ‘Abscheulicher’ from Fidelio is risky, her heroic pipes revealing the awkwardness of the vocal line’s intervals on a particularly grand scale. However, the aria’s rising sense of exaltation – as the character resolves to meet challenges well out of her reach – also unfurls here with a grandeur not often heard even from the most Wagnerian of sopranos.

Sunnegårdh’s best vocal fit is in the long Act 2 Flying Dutchman duet with Albert Dohmen, in which she sounds intensely wonder-struck in the opening moments. The Strauss selections are more intermittent. Salome’s final scene begins with what could be an unconventional acting choice (Salome being temporarily demure?) or the vocal necessity of singing passages that lie uncomfortable high. Memories of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf are best banished for the Four Last Songs, along with any notions that these songs are semi-private philosophical musings. Sunnegårdh’s broad strokes equate profundity with grandeur, the final two songs being the most successful, at times conveying the courage needed to step into the hereafter. But only two out of four? As I said, this is for the converted.