Deutsche Grammophon Star Makes His Singapore Debut

11 November 2026 · 8pm · Victoria Concert Hall

We’re delighted to welcome German pianist Julius Asal to Singapore for the very first time — an artist Menahem Pressler once described as having a sound that “seemed to tell him a secret,” and one of the most exciting young voices in piano today.

For his Singapore debut, Asal brings a programme titled “Last Words” — a beautifully considered evening that explores one of the most moving threads in the piano repertoire: the music composers and characters write when there’s nothing left to say but the essential. Over 79 minutes, he takes us from confession to farewell to longing, pairing two towering statements from the Austro-German canon with a piece written especially for him, and a set of his own arrangements from one of the world’s great tragic love stories.

Whether you’re a lifelong concertgoer or coming to a piano recital for the first time, this is a programme built to move you.

About Julius Asal

Praised by Menahem Pressler for his “uniquely beautiful sound and special sonority,” German pianist Julius Asal is quickly establishing himself as one of the most promising performers of his generation. In 2023, Deutsche Grammophon signed him as an exclusive recording artist; he was later named a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and Classic FM’s Rising Star 2024.

Asal has appeared at many of the world’s most prestigious stages and festivals, including Wigmore Hall, the Musikverein Vienna, Suntory Hall Tokyo, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Klavier-Festival Ruhr, and the Oxford Piano Festival. In 2025, winning the Terence Judd–Hallé Award brought recital debuts in Tokyo, Osaka, and Frankfurt, plus soloist appearances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields — while a last-minute call to step in for Evgeny Kissin, performing Scriabin’s Piano Concerto with the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, became one of the year’s standout moments. Forthcoming engagements include Wigmore Hall, the Vancouver Playhouse, and Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam.

On record, his Deutsche Grammophon debut Scriabin–Scarlatti (2024) has already passed 25 million streams; his most recent release, Siena Tapes (2025), fuses Ravel with his own improvisations, recorded at producer Rick Rubin’s private estate near Siena. It’s a fitting pairing — improvisation is a real hallmark of Asal’s artistry, one that has surfaced memorably in unplanned moments on stage, from stepping in at Deutsche Grammophon’s Yellow Lounge to his 2024 Seoul Arts Center debut. As Le Monde put it, in a headline devoted entirely to him: “The Secret and Subtle Alliances of Julius Asal.”

The Programme

Every work on this programme was written at, or looks back on, a point of ending — think of the evening as four very different, very human kinds of farewell.

It starts gently, with Schumann’s Ghost Variations, the last work he ever completed, written days before his breakdown in 1854. He believed the theme had been dictated to him by the spirits of Schubert and Mendelssohn — and it plays like a private goodbye, hushed and fragile, rather than a grand statement.

Next comes Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32, Op. 111, his final piano sonata and one of the best-loved farewells in the repertoire. Just two movements: a stormy opening struggle, then an Arietta that slowly dissolves into trills and stillness, as if the argument simply stops being necessary. If you know Beethoven’s fire, this is your chance to hear him land somewhere far more distant and serene.

Singapore will also get its first hearing of Lera Auerbach’s “Love Letters of Emma Hauck”, written especially for Julius Asal and premiered by him this past March at the Barber Institute, Birmingham. The title draws on real letters written by Emma Hauck, who was admitted to a psychiatric institution in Germany in 1909. Over and over, she wrote the same words to her husband — “Herzensschatzi, komm” (“Darling, come”) — filling page after page, though none of the letters were ever sent. Auerbach doesn’t set out to illustrate or narrate them; her music responds instead to the longing at their core — the reaching for connection, and the ache of never quite arriving. It’s a deeply personal addition to the evening’s “last words,” and a piece written especially for Julius Asal.

The evening closes with a suite from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, mixing the composer’s own piano transcriptions with new ones by Asal himself — a practice he’s returned to since his very first recording. Here the mood turns outward, from private confession to Shakespeare’s own dramatic farewells: Friar Laurence’s counsel, the hush of the Madrigal, Tybalt’s fatal recognition of Romeo, the swagger of Mercutio and the Knights, and finally the lovers’ parting before dawn. It’s a big, theatrical way to send the audience home — the full sweep of the story, after an evening built on intimacy.