A realistic volley of drums at the start of Salome's Dance promises a spectacular in the best Telarc traditions. That turns out to be not entirely the case, given the less than sumptuous Cincinnati string sound which the recording simply puts across as it is; the ear-catching moments are the many rounded, keenly-inflected solos, from the first-veil oboe onwards, rather than any full-orchestral splendour (game though the horns undoubtedly are in an otherwise over-leisurely Rosenkavalier Prelude). The real would-be show-piece, the Festliches Praludium, boasts a very healthy-sounding organ but an over-fierce, relentlessly fanfaring orchestra; only Sawallisch, on an otherwise disappointing Strauss disc on EMI, has ever managed to make the massed note-spinning sound perfectly natural. Nor is this a Burleske in Technicolor vein: Jeffrey Kahane throws off the wit of Till Eulenspiegel's big brother with a pleasing lightness of touch, but falls crisply short of the Brahmsian bravura necessary for contrast (so, rather more pleasingly, do the orchestra in their brief developmental rant).
I enjoyed the best-known portions of this entertaining programme most – noting with pleasure the occasional new textural revelation in Salome's Dance. No longer did I suffer qualms over the anonymously cobbled Rosenkavalier Suite (the insert-note suggests Artur Rodzinski as the originator) since it steers clear of the preludial cuts hideously inflicted by Strauss in his own 'waltz sequence' and gives us an insight into the orchestral textures of the big set pieces without the voices (and with very little in the way of extra instrumental substitutes); the slightly abridged presentation of the rose is affectingly done by Lopez-Cobos with translucent textures throughout. There are worse ways, certainly, to lead a young listener on to the complete opera.'