Elsa Dreisig’s striking debut album presented images of operatic characters (‘Miroir(s)’, 12/18). The French-Danish soprano, pianist Jonathan Ware and the ever-imaginative Erato have cooked up something similarly out of the ordinary for her first solo song album. The result is one of the most purely seductive recitals to have come my way for a long time.

It takes its name from one of Richard Strauss’s best-known songs and, daringly, dots his Four Last Songs (in soprano-and piano guise) throughout a seductive selection of Rachmaninov and Duparc – with Strauss’s late ‘Malven’ thrown in for good measure. Purist eyebrows might be raised but it proves a remarkably successful gambit: in Dreisig’s introspective, understated performances we hear the Four Last Songs anew, each one fascinatingly set apart from the others in its new context.

And thanks to Ware’s superbly dappled and delicate way with the accompaniment, they come across less as pale imitations of the orchestral originals than something like evocative, distantly remembered echoes. That effect is partly also due, of course, to the rest of the programme – an exquisite selection in which emotions are largely kept veiled, remaining tentative until we get to the grand passions of the final songs of Rachmaninov’s Op 38.

Dreisig’s beautiful soprano is velvety and soft-grained, and matches the musical world Ware conjures up superbly – the album might be called ‘Morgen’ but the atmosphere is more one of hazy, dewy promise than bright dawn. She’s a natural and instinctive communicator, although not one to push the text hard, letting it sit comfortably on the vocal line, whether in the Strauss, her rapt Rachmaninov or the delicious Duparc (the central pair of ‘Chanson triste’ and ‘Extase’ is especially exquisite).

The programme starts with a superb account of ‘L’invitation au voyage’; and when we get to the end, with ‘Morgen’, Dreisig tellingly fills her line with an extra sense of warmth and hope that makes one just want to start again. It’s all beautifully engineered, and includes a gentle interlude in the form of the premiere recording of Duparc’s Aux étoiles for piano – the digital release includes two more solos from the superb Ware too. This is an album to relish.