Hanna-Elisabeth Müller & Juliane Ruf

The young soprano Hanna-Elisabeth Müller has been hailed in the German music press as a "Zaubermädchen mit Zukunft". With guest roles at the Staatsoper Hamburg and a fixed contract at the Bayerische Staatsoper, her future is indeed assured. It is still on the opera circuit that singers forge great careers. In the world of singing, however, the Lieder genre remains the queen of disciplines and it is one that Hanna-Elisabeth Müller holds dear. With her pure, expressive timbre and bewitching stage presence, she immediately winds us round her finger. She and the exquisite pianist Juliane Ruf have put together a programme that highlights her versatility; it ranges from introvert, intimate miniatures from Robert Schumann's sheaf of declarations of love 'Myrthen' to the more theatrical, sensual 'Mädchenblumen' by Richard Strauss. In 'The Poet's Echo' by Benjamin Britten to texts by Pushkin, she pulls out all the stops. She does so both vocally - Britten wrote this cycle for the dramatic soprano Galina Vishnevskaya - and emotionally: from disconsolate loneliness to euphoric joy. In Alban Berg's late-Romantic 'Sieben frühe Lieder', lastly, Müller and Ruf set our spines unendingly a-tingle.