SNS piano star Julius Asal: 'Let's share a quiet journey inward'

"My darling, come to me (Herzensschatzi, komm)."

In 1909, at a psychiatric hospital in Heidelberg, Germany, a 30-year-old woman named Emma Hauck filled letter after letter to her husband with the same desperate plea, repeated endlessly. The pages were dense with anguish. Not a single letter was ever sent. No reply ever came. The letters were filed away inside medical records and forgotten.

One hundred and seventeen years later, in March, those letters found a voice in piano music — through "Love Letters of Emma Hauck," a work by Russian-born composer Lera Auerbach. German pianist Julius Asal, 29, who gave the world premiere of the piece in Birmingham, England, now brings it before Korean audiences.

"This work is unlike anything I have ever heard, read or performed," he said. "It is a great honor to encounter this music, but looking so deeply into the human interior — into such a profound abyss — for such a long time was never easy."

Asal made the confession in a written interview. Since signing exclusively with Deutsche Grammophon (DG) in 2023, he has become one of the most closely watched pianists in the international music world. Returning to Korea for the first time in two years, he launched a recital tour on Oct. 6, with performances continuing at Seoul Arts Center on Tuesday and at Gangneung Arts Center on Wednesday.

"Coming back to Korea this year is something very special," Asal said. "Korean audiences have an extraordinarily strong passion for music, and they express that passion in a way that makes an artist feel genuine warmth and trust."

For Asal, the piano has been a "mother tongue and the foundation of life" since before he could speak.

His mother was a pianist who taught students at home, and the young Asal would pick out what he heard her play, the instrument becoming a natural toy. He did not take formal lessons until he was eight. What began as play eventually led him to study under Eldar Nebolsin and András Schiff at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin and the Kronberg Academy.

Asal's rise in the international music world was anything but conventional. While many young performers make their names through prestigious competitions, he emerged through the Instagram algorithm. DG discovered his original interpretations and spontaneous musical experiments on social media, and a recording contract followed.

"I try not to think too much about where my musical language is heading," Asal said. "I merely try to stay present with the music that is near me right now and watch where it takes me."

His album "Siena Tapes," released last September, began as a tribute to Maurice Ravel on the 150th anniversary of his birth but gradually expanded into something more personally Asal's own.

"My producer and Deutsche Grammophon gave me the freedom to follow my instincts and simply be myself," he said. "Thanks to that, the improvisational ideas that grew out of Ravel's music ended up taking on a far greater role than I had originally imagined."

He added that the result would have been difficult to achieve had the project been focused purely on interpreting existing works. "I think the project as a whole reveals a facet of who I am," he said.

The recital showcases Asal's skill as a curator. He frames the program with Beethoven's first piano sonata (No. 1) and last (No. 32, Op. 111) at either end, placing Bartók's "Three Burlesques" and "Suite for Piano," Op. 14, alongside Auerbach's "Love Letters of Emma Hauck" in between.

The architecture of the program reflects his musical philosophy. "I am always more interested in creating tension across the program as a whole than in simply gathering individually impressive pieces," he said, noting it is a program he is not performing anywhere else at the moment.

"It is a journey into the most intimate emotional world of human beings — like riding a roller coaster. Beethoven forms the outer frame, and at the center sits the early Bartók. Beethoven opening and closing the program feels like a circle being completed, yet at the same time it remains open, as if leaving the answer unresolved."

The "Love Letters of Emma Hauck," nestled between the Beethoven sonatas, holds a special place for him. In the weeks before the world premiere, he worked closely with the composer. "It is an extraordinarily special experience for a performer," Asal said, "because you cannot send a WhatsApp message to Beethoven asking what a particular passage in the score means." He and Auerbach found themselves largely in agreement. "Lera and I saw eye to eye on many artistic decisions," he recalled.

"But it is always enormously valuable for a composer to observe the choices a performer makes from a certain distance and offer their own perspective. I think the same is true in reverse — the performer gives voice to the music, allowing the composer to step back from their own work and hear it in a different way."

He described Emma Hauck's letters as "something close to an intense work of art in their own right." When approaching the piece, he often recalls a line from Nietzsche. "As Nietzsche said, 'If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you' — there is something intensely powerful here," Asal said. "That is part of what makes this work so difficult, and at the same time so compellingly magnetic."

Asal has long been drawn to the dark and hidden terrain of the human interior. He counts Franz Kafka and Georg Büchner among his deepest literary influences and says he has always been drawn to the darker side of music. Yet what he pursues is not hopeless despair.

"I believe nothing can exist without its opposite. Pure darkness cannot exist on its own — and without contrast, it would carry no meaning at all. Our lives need contrast."

Asal's artistic landscape extends well beyond music. The same curatorial instinct that weaves together different eras and works to create original contexts also connects to his interest in space and architecture.

"Programming is just as important a part of the work as performing," he said. "Choosing what repertoire to play — and what not to play — is one of the most personal decisions an artist can make."

Asal says he has long been captivated by contemporary architecture, drawn to the particular "emotional resonance" it stirs in him. "I draw inspiration from many things beyond those directly related to music," he said. "That said, I do not consciously go looking for hidden connections — they tend to reveal themselves naturally, and the ideas that grow from them are entirely subjective." The final link in his carefully considered curation, he added, is the audience. "Ultimately, you need listeners who are willing to tune in to these ideas and receive them in their own way."

That trust in artistic intuition proves its worth under pressure. Last year in Bologna, Italy, he stepped in as a last-minute replacement to perform Scriabin's Piano Concerto, Op. 20, under conductor Andrei Boreyko — standing in for the legendary pianist Kissin. "It was a particularly grueling week, but experiences like that remind me there is more strength inside me than I first thought," he said.

In an era when algorithms and AI imitate everything from composition to performance, Asal has consistently kept improvisation at the heart of his work — because it is a form of human breath that exists only in the here and now.

"In the age of AI, being able to improvise in real time on stage and share something that exists only in that single moment with other people — I think that is a very special privilege."

To audiences coming to share that privilege at his recital, Asal extends an invitation to a quiet journey inward. The ultimate challenge he has always pursued is, paradoxically, found in the most silent of places. "One of the things I have always worked toward is truly listening to the sounds actually happening at the piano and discovering what the music is asking of me," he said. "It is a process that never ends."

"After this performance, I hope you will feel that you have shared in a journey toward your own interior. Even music you have known for a long time — I hope you will hear it with new ears, and that it will come to you fresh once more."