“A Lieder recital is language in song form, and my role as the interpreter of the songs is to draw listeners quickly and easily into that sphere, to prepare their path into this very different world. I chose Lieder for this CD that are close to my heart. I feel very much at home with the music of Richard Strauss and it goes very well with the fin-de-siècle mood of Alban Berg. With that as a basis, we then started looking for songs whose lyrics leave reality behind, and that is when we came upon works relating to flowers. There is much that is ambiguous in some of the songs. And they definitely reflect everyday 21st-century emotions; their lyrics address, treat and analyse those emotions. It is many decades since the Lieder were composed, and of course today we use different language; as a singer I interpret the message for the present day. These are wonderful, finely painted pictures of girls, miniatures on an imaginary wall, that speak to us directly.” – Hanna-Elisabeth Müller talking about Traumgekrönt