Echoes of Ravel: Julius Asal Intertwines Past and Present on Second DG Album – SIENA TAPES

Inspired by the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth, Asal curates a personal programme
that combines the French composer’s music with his own improvisatory pieces

 SIENA TAPES presents Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, Prélude in A minor, Menuet sur le nom de Haydn and
À la manière de Borodine, interwoven with Asal’s Prélude (3191) and Cascades I-III

Julius Asal is also celebrating having been named
the recipient of the 2025 Terence Judd-Hallé Award

Recorded in the Chapel of the Sun on the Tuscan estate of legendary US producer Rick Rubin,
SIENA TAPES will be released on 5 September 2025

“Ravel’s music doesn’t need a framework, but I’ve had the time of my life creating one”

Julius Asal

When Julius Asal was invited to give a recital in the Chapel of the Sun on US producer Rick Rubin’s estate in the Tuscan province of Siena, he found himself fascinated by the ancient building’s atmosphere and acoustic. “There are places where you would like to continue playing even after the audience has gone home,” he recalls. “Somehow I had the impression that the sounds in those walls could echo forever.” He had found the recording location for his second Deutsche Grammophon album, SIENA TAPES, a follow-up to last year’s Scriabin – Scarlatti (“a remarkably assured debut album, imaginatively constructed, probing and a tribute to sensitivity and outstanding musicianship” – MusicWeb International).

Recorded at the Chapel in September 2024, SIENA TAPES is built around four solo piano works by Ravel – Prélude in A minor, Menuet sur le nom de Haydn, À la manière de Borodine and Jeux d’eau. It also introduces four new works by Julius Asal – Cascades I-III and Prélude (3191) – and Petites Vagues, by Christian Badzura, producer of the album and DG Vice President A&R New Repertoire. Featuring album notes by Asal himself, SIENA TAPES will be released in all formats on 5 September 2025. Jeux d’eau will be available as a digital single from 25 April, followed on 23 May by Cascade I and on 25 July by Petites Vagues.

Recently named the winner of the 2025 Terence Judd-Hallé Award, having been selected for this honour by BBC Radio 3 from the pianists on its New Generation Artists scheme, Julius Asal is already known not only for his exceptional artistry but for his brilliance as an improviser and for his gift for innovative programme curation. As they did on Scriabin – Scarlatti, these three aspects of his musicianship come together on SIENA TAPES.

The album was originally conceived as a 150th-anniversary tribute to Ravel, whose music, says Asal, has “accompanied, challenged and questioned” him since childhood. “In a miraculous way,” he notes, “Ravel had access to all sound colours. Even his more subtle works for piano contain shades and forces that you would usually find only in a complex symphony.” He chose three pianistic miniatures – the Prélude of 1913, À la manière de Borodine and Menuet sur le nom de Haydn – to complement the composer’s much-loved portrait of shimmering, cascading water: “the heart of this album beats in Jeux d’eau, the water games that exist somewhere between lyrical beauty and bizarreness”.

Asal also recorded his own Prélude (3191), its title a play on the composition date of Ravel’s Prélude. To this brief, poignant work (“much more closely related to Ravel’s than one might initially think”) he added Badzura’s Petites Vagues, itself a fusion of Ravel and Debussy. He then turned to the question of weaving everything together. Inspired by Daphnis et Chloé, Une barque sur l’océan and other pieces by Ravel, Asal produced three interconnected improvisations that are also related to the rest of the programme. Eventually christened Cascades I, II and III, these now act as the opening works in “three small trilogies” created in the midst of the album’s many thematic cross-connections.

During the writing and recording process in Tuscany, what started out as a homage to Ravel developed and grew into what Asal calls “a very personal document”. “There is a kind of ambivalence that I constantly feel with SIENA TAPES,” he concludes. “Whether it’s more on the side of quirky poetry or lyrical darkness, I’m not sure…”

Julius Asal will perform repertoire from SIENA TAPES, together with works by Brahms and Rachmaninoff, at this year’s Klavier-Festival Ruhr (12 May) and at the Tivoli Vredenburg in Utrecht (22 May).