Susanna Wallumrød’s musical relationship with Charles Baudelaire began in 2020 with the 10-song Baudelaire And Piano, but here she is accompanied by Oslo’s Norwegian Radio Orchestra. These sensual selections from Les Fleurs Du Mal embody, in the poet’s translated words, a “cold and sinister beauty”.
Even in translation Baudelaire’s imagery is extraordinarily dramatic. He looks onto ‘the shrouded corpse of all I love’ on Alchemy Of Suffering, and on
Obsession he’s frightened of forests and hates the ocean: ‘…the bitter laughter of a man defeated, full of sobs and
insults, I hear resounding in the sea’s vast laughter.