Like a mythical harp-playing bard, Joel von Lerber too is a teller of legends. But such is the Berlin-based Swiss harpist’s sweeping command of colour and line that he has no need for words. The music, almost all of which takes its inspiration from tales or poems, says it all.

Von Lerber’s second album and first for Swiss label Claves is also a homage to that great harp virtuoso, composer and pedagogue Henriette Renié. Her darkly dramatic Légende d’après ‘Les elfes’ de Leconte de Lisle, with its echoes of Schubert’s ‘Erlkönig’, and the sprightly Danse des lutins are two of the highlights of the programme, showing off von Lerber’s supple technique and narrative skills to their best advantage.

There are also more straightforwardly tuneful if often equally virtuoso works such as Grandjany’s The Colorado Trail, and theme and variations including the marvellous Variations on a Theme by Paganini (the theme being from Paganini’s famous 24th Caprice) by Mikhail Mchedelov. These remind us that the majority of the works here are also essentially fantasies, and von Lerber is good at milking the extended introductions for all their worth to remind us in turn of the word’s manifold senses.

But the most shamelessly expressive playing comes right at the beginning, with Fauré’s exquisite Une châtelaine en sa tour, after a poem by Verlaine. Whether striking près de la table or aiming for a juicier sound, whether spinning a silken melody or exhaling glissandos and feathery figurations, von Lerber here presents us with an irresistibly gentle invitation to enter a magical world.