Alma Deutscher (born 2005)
Alma Deutscher was born in Basingstoke, England. She was home schooled by her father (an Israeli linguist) and her mother (a literary scholar). She began playing piano at the age of 2 and the violin at 3. By the age of 5 she was writing down her piano compositions. YouTube has an interview she did on Israeli television when she was 8 speaking German and Hebrew as well as English, improvising on the piano, and playing her own composition on the violin.
Alma Deutscher composes in traditional forms and idioms with a strong focus on melody. She has composed orchestral music, chamber music, piano works, songs, and opera. Her second opera Cinderella is based on her own libretto and premiered in 2016. (A 2017 production by Opera San José is available on DVD and Blu-ray.) In Alma Deutscher’s version, Cinderella is a talented but neglected composer, her stepmother runs an opera house, the two sisters are deficient divas, and the prince is a poet who finds Cinderella not with a shoe but with the beginning of one of her melodies that only she can complete. A new opera The Emperor’s New Waltz will premiere at the Salzburg State Theatre in 2023.
This is the 2017 premiere of Alma Deutscher’s three-movement Piano Concerto with the composer at the piano.
Alma Deutscher introduces this 2019 performance of her Waltz of the Sirens, revealing a bit of her attitude towards beauty in music: