Julius Asal - Scriabin - Scarlatti
Julius Asal - Scriabin - Scarlatti
(Deutsche Grammophon, 2024)
Deutsche Grammophon has been picking up young and accomplished talent and presenting and promoting them in an old-fashioned way through traditional advertising and a carefully curated online presence. So is the case of German pianist Julius Asal. He is following the same business model that provided Lang Lang, Yuja Wang, and Víkingur Ólafsson: young artists ready for their professional breakthrough with thoughtful thematic projects providing the listener something other than a rote performance of music already documented ad nauseam.
Asal strikes an inventive juxtaposition of the works of Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) and Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757). The album begins and ends with a fragment from the finale of Scriabin’s First Piano Sonata. Asal’s full performance of the Sonata is framed by a selection of Scriabin’s etudes and preludes, six sonatas by Scarlatti, and two improvisatory Transitions composed by the pianist himself. The result is a compelling exposition of old and new that brings together disparate styles into close proximity, revealing more in common than not.
The somber, serious Scriabin tempers the innate playfulness of the Scarlatti miniatures, coaxing the collection to a new level of expression where each composer’s work informs the performance of the other’s. Asal plays with authority, if not muscularity, on the Scriabin selections. Asal’s Scarlatti is among the most delicate on record. He plays these old pieces with an informed tenderness that draws out Scarlatti’s more whimsical thinking.