Julius Asal

Oberursel, learned by ear

Julius Friedrich Asal was born on 12 February 1997 in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe and grew up in Oberursel, in the Taunus hills north of Frankfurt. His mother is a pianist; his father was principal clarinet at the Frankfurt opera house. By his own account he was improvising at the keyboard from around the age of three, before any formal instruction and before he had much language, working out what he wanted by ear rather than off a page. Formal lessons began at eight, with Sibylle Cada in Frankfurt am Main.

The conservatoire route came later and was unusually long. He studied with Eldar Nebolsin at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin from 2017 to 2022, overlapping with a period at the Kronberg Academy from 2021 to 2024 under András Schiff, and worked along the way with Alfred Brendel, Richard Goode, Menahem Pressler and the violinist Gidon Kremer. Pressler's remark that he could not work out how Asal had found his particular sonority has followed him onto promoters' pages ever since. Asal himself describes playing as a tightrope walk between what a composer put on the page and what a performer finds in it — a framing that explains why the improvising never got left behind at the stage door.

From a Prokofiev debut to an exclusive contract

His first album, released in 2022 on IBS Classical, was Prokofiev piano works together with his own arrangements. Deutsche Grammophon signed him exclusively in October 2023, and the first single from the project that became Scriabin · Scarlatti appeared on 27 October that year. Four more single instalments followed through the winter and spring; the full album landed on 3 May 2024, with a deluxe edition on 22 November 2024.

The record is the clearest statement of how Asal thinks about programming. Scarlatti sonatas sit alongside Scriabin preludes and the First Sonata, and the joins are sometimes his own improvised transitions. He has explained the mechanics plainly enough — a Scriabin prelude ending on the note that opens the next Scarlatti sonata — while admitting that other links between the two cannot really be put into words. He calls Scriabin's First Sonata a miracle piece, and the pairing an attempt to find a new room where the two composers meet, both of them miniaturists obsessed with detail.

Around the album came a run of one-off singles that show the same restlessness: his own December 32nd on 15 March 2024, an arrangement of Mars from Holst's The Planets a week later, and Debussy's Des pas sur la neige on 25 October 2024. BBC Radio 3 made him a New Generation Artist for 2024–26; Classic FM named him a Rising Star for 2024.

The Siena records

In September 2024 Asal was invited to give a recital in the Chapel of the Sun, on the record producer Rick Rubin's estate in the province of Siena. He was taken enough with the building's acoustic to record there, and the results became Siena Tapes, his second Deutsche Grammophon album, issued on 29 August 2025 after singles in April, May and July.

The programme is four Ravel solo pieces — Jeux d'eau, the Prélude in A minor, the Menuet sur le nom de Haydn and À la manière de Borodine — set among Asal's own Prélude (3191) and his three-part Cascades cycle, plus Petites Vagues by Christian Badzura, who produced the album. It started life as a contribution to Ravel's 150th anniversary and turned into something Asal describes as a personal document, pitched between quirky poetry and lyrical darkness. His line on the method is unfussy: Ravel's music does not need a framework, but he had the time of his life building one.

Siena Loops, released on 16 October 2026, is the sequel and the more revealing of the two. Six tracks: an Intro, January Zero, Cascades II, III and IV in what Deutsche Grammophon labels ConcertLab versions, and Ravel's A minor Prélude played on an upright. Several were captured live at the release event at ConcertLab Utrecht. The Cascades are improvisations that change shape at every performance, and the EP treats the loop as a process of transformation rather than repetition — electronic textures folded in around the piano. It is the first time the live, unfixed half of his practice has been documented as such rather than used as glue between other people's pieces.

Where he stands now

The British institutions have moved fastest on him. On 3 March 2025 he won the Terence Judd-Hallé Award, worth £7,000 and, more usefully, a set of Hallé engagements across the 2025–26 season: soloist at the Bridgewater Hall, a chamber recital with Hallé players at Hallé St Peter's, and a solo recital in the Manchester Mid-Day Concert Series. That same month he became the first Academy of St Martin in the Fields BBC New Generation Associate, a post created around the New Generation Artists scheme. Debuts with the BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra followed during 2025.

He also turns up as a soloist on other people's records: Scriabin: Orchestral Works with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under Fabio Luisi, released on 24 October 2025. North America came later than Europe — his Canadian debut was in February 2026, in Vancouver, and the touring diary now runs from Singapore to Manchester across 2026 and into spring 2027.

What a show is like

The current solo recital is roughly an hour and three quarters including an interval, and it is usually split cleanly in two. The Elbphilharmonie's Kleiner Saal on 22 February 2026 is the template: Rachmaninov's thirteen Préludes op. 32 complete before the break, then the Siena Tapes material — Ravel, Badzura and Asal — after it. A 550-seat shoebox hall suits that second half, where the improvised Cascades need the audience close enough to hear the room as part of the sound.

Where he plays a conventional recital, the programmes are dense rather than showy. Vancouver on 8 February 2026, a 3pm matinee at the Vancouver Playhouse and his Canadian debut, ran Bartók's Suite op. 14, Brahms's Ballades op. 10, Bartók's Burlesques op. 8c and Rachmaninov's Preludes op. 32, with a post-performance talk-back rather than an encore-heavy finish. There is no support act; it is one pianist and one piano, or a concerto appearance.

The notices so far are warm with reservations. Reviewing his September 2025 concert with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields — Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 22 and Ravel's G major Concerto, four stars — the critic found him remarkably mature and poised for his age, holding back from free virtuosity or eccentric reading in the Mozart and turning distinctly more lyrical and playful in the Ravel. The same review marked him down for cadenzas that lacked sharp definition and for moments in the Ravel where the solo line drifted out of step with the ensemble. That is a fair sketch of the gap between the records and the concert platform: the conception is already unusual, the orchestral partnership still settling.

The diary ahead

The autumn 2026 run opens at the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall in Singapore on 11 November with Schumann, Beethoven, Auerbach and Prokofiev, then the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam on 27 November with Schubert, Chopin, Bach, Brahms and Prokofiev, and the Historische Stadthalle Wuppertal on 29 November with the Bach, Brahms and Prokofiev core of that programme.

Beyond that: the Frankfurter Hof in Mainz on 29 January 2027 with Beethoven and Prokofiev; a British pair on 11 and 12 February 2027 at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and Jerwood Hall in London, both built from Beethoven, Gonzales and Asal's own music; Schumann's Piano Concerto at the Staatstheater Darmstadt on 14 February 2027; and St Luke's Battersea on 17 April 2027. Only one date is currently on sale.