Sir Peter Maxwell Davies composed this large-scale ballet score in a mere six months. The music is not as intricately intense as in the cycle of symphonies which he had recently embarked on, and sounds in places more like a distant cousin of The Rite of Spring than of the Strauss opera. But Salome has an expansive confidence in its handling of a large orchestra, and there’s a relish for the more grotesque aspects of the subject which reflect Davies’s wealth of experience in works of music theatre concerned with violence and madness.

This recording was made some weeks before the ballet’s first performance by the Fleming Flindt Circus Company in Copenhagen, and Janos Fürst and his players do wonders in keeping the tricky score on the rails. It shows its age, especially in the rather unflattering string sound, and there are some small cuts in the published version of Scene 4. But until a new recording comes along, this one is a valuable reminder of one of the composer’s most substantial and rarely heard works.