For violinist Petra Müllejans, spontaneity and emotionality are inseparable components of an historically informed performance that has made its aim the engaging and lively communication of the music of past centuries. As an Artistic Director of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Petra Müllejans is mainly interested in Baroque and classical music. Especially the theatrical qualities of the works, their rhetorical and, above all, dramatic expressiveness are important to her.

The chamber music of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, with soloist formations, is another musical passion of hers that she brings to performance in various programmes with the Freiburg BaroqueConsort and The Age of Passions ensemble. In addition, Petra Müllejans regularly appears in concert with the South African pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout, a fertile musical collaboration which recently resulted in a CD of Mozart violin sonatas on the harmonia mundi USA label. She also gains musical energies from her love of Klezmer and jazz, which she performs with her group Hot and Cool in concerts and on CD recordings, also with great success.

The latest CD recorded by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra under her artistic leadership is devoted to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s six harpsichord concertos Wq 43 (with harpsichordist Andreas Staier). It appeared in April 2011 under the harmonia mundi France label, was greeted with rave reviews by music critics and received the Gramophone Award 2011: “This is a hot CD, one of those releases where everything seems to have arrived together at the right time. Here is the world’s finest Baroque orchestra eagerly joining with one of the world’s best harpsichordists in concertos by a composer who right now seems to be winning new recognition as the giant musical personality he was.” (Gramophone Magazine, June 2011)

As Professor of Baroque Violin, Petra Müllejans teaches at the College of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt-am-Main.