The young german pianist Julius Asal transcribes the remaining six pieces and completes the ballet Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev only transcribed 10 of the 16 pieces). The famous Pieces op.4 and the Pensées op.62 complete this great CD.

‘This CD is not only a confession and result of my great admiration for the music of Sergei Prokofiev, it also reflects an intense examination of one of the most multifaceted and versatile artists of the 20th century. My chosen programme spans around three decades of his compositional works, in which hope and fate, innocence and abyss, directly intertwine and contrast each other. At the heart of this recording is the ballet Romeo and Juliet, based on the play by William Shakespeare. In addition to a total of three orchestral suites, the composer also created a suite for piano containing ten selected transcriptions from the orchestral version. This version, for the first time, includes six other pieces from Romeo and Juliet, which I arranged for the piano in 2020. They add other famous themes to the original piano suite as well as about half of its original duration. Apart from dealing with the orchestral score, which is in principle true to the original, new correlations arise occasionally through the linking of thematic material from different acts. The idea was, in particular, to bring about a cumulation of the musical characters by consciously reusing individual motifs based on the original and thus to create a new arc of tension in the piano suite.’ –Julius Asal

The multiple international prize-winning pianist has been particularly shaped in recent years through the collaboration with his mentors Eldar Nebolsin and Sir András Schiff. He has also received artistic impulses from musicians such as Gidon Kremer, Christoph Eschenbach, Eberhard Feltz, Bernhard Wetz and Boris Berezovsky. His previous teachers also include Oliver Kern, Wolfgang Hess and Sibylle Cada. Julius Asal is the recipient of the Steinway Prize and has received scholarships from the Oxford Philharmonic Society, the PE-Förderkreis, the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and the Ferruccio Busoni Foundation. In addition to his concert activities as a soloist and chamber musician, he devotes himself to the arrangement of lecture concerts and readings with a musical framework.