Alma Deutscher

Alma Deutscher is an English composer, pianist and violinist from Oxford, United Kingdom. Born in 2005, she is known as a child prodigy and begins performing and composing at a very young age. She starts piano at two and violin at three, and by the time she can speak she is already singing in perfect pitch and reading music before words.

Early compositions and training

Deutscher writes her first piano sonata at five, with a recording later released in 2013. At seven she completes the short opera The Sweeper of Dreams, and at nine she writes a violin concerto. She composes her first full-length opera, Cinderella, at ten. Her early musical education emphasises improvisation and the Partimenti tradition, which is linked to eighteenth-century Italian teaching methods. Professor Robert Gjerdingen sends her exercises and comments on her compositions, and she also studies improvisation with the Swiss musician Tobias Cramm.

She is educated at home until the age of 16. Her parents decide on home education after an experience at school leaves her upset. She later says that home study allows her to learn more efficiently and to keep the freedom she needs for creativity. Deutscher is trilingual in English, German and Hebrew.

Music, style and influences

Deutscher’s music is associated with melody, harmony and a tonal language rooted in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century classical music. She describes melody as central to music, and says that she wants to write beautiful music rather than music shaped by dissonance or ugliness. She explains that melodies often come to her unexpectedly, including in dreams, and distinguishes between those moments of inspiration and the harder work of building them into finished pieces. She also describes an “improvising mood” in which melodies seem to come directly from her fingers.

Her own imaginary world, called Transylvanian, also forms part of her creative development. It has its own language and fictional composers, including Antonin Yellowsink, Ashy, Shell and Flara, each with different musical styles. Some of her early pieces are assigned to these invented composers.

Operas and major works

The Sweeper of Dreams is inspired by a Neil Gaiman story and uses a libretto adapted by Elizabeth Adlington. Its first performance takes place in Israel in 2013. The work includes a story in which the only applicant for the title role is a sixteen-year-old girl, and its themes include female empowerment.

Cinderella becomes Deutscher’s best-known opera. She develops it over several years, expanding and revising it from an early chamber version into orchestral and later revised forms. In her version, Cinderella is a composer and the prince is a poet; a melody she sings to him replaces the traditional glass slipper. The chamber version premieres in Israel in 2015. The orchestral version premieres in Vienna in 2016 under the patronage of Zubin Mehta, and the U.S. premiere follows in 2017 at Opera San Jose. The Vienna State Opera stages an adaptation for children in 2018 and again in 2020, and Deutscher later revises the work further for Salzburg State Theatre.

Her piano concerto is premiered when she is 12. Other named works include the violin concerto in G minor, the piano concerto in E-flat major, Waltz of the Sirens, Dance of the Solent Mermaids, Elmayer Waltz, several songs, chamber pieces, and a number of piano works including Piano Sonata in E-flat major, The Chase, Sixty Minutes Polka, and the Ludwig Waltz pieces.

She also writes a second full-length opera, The Emperor's New Waltz (German: Des Kaisers neue Walzer), commissioned by the Salzburg State Theatre. Its story centres on Mozart, modern beats, dissonance and harmonic beauty, and it is based on the idea of truth, pretence and the unifying power of music.

Career, performances and recordings

Deutscher first attracts wider public attention in 2012 after Stephen Fry comments on her YouTube channel. In 2014, a televised performance and interview on Intermezzo with Arik brings her to the attention of figures in the classical music world, including Zubin Mehta. A viral YouTube mashup by Kutiman also uses an ostinato from one of her early videos.

She later performs her own music as soloist with orchestras including the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra of St. Luke’s. She also gives recitals at the Lucerne Festival and the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and performs at the Austrian Chancellery on state occasions, including a commemoration service for the end of the Second World War in Europe.

Notable solo appearances include the Google Zeitgeist conference in 2015, where she appears with Stephen Hawking, and the opening concert of the Carinthischer Sommer festival in 2017, where she performs her violin concerto and the premiere of her piano concerto with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. She makes her Carnegie Hall debut in 2019 in a concert devoted entirely to her own compositions, with Dame Jane Glover conducting the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. The programme includes her violin concerto, piano concerto, extracts from Cinderella and Waltz of the Sirens.

Her first album, The Music of Alma Deutscher, is released in 2013. Sony Classical later releases From My Book of Melodies, a piano album drawing on compositions from ages four to fourteen. Her collection From My Book of Melodies is published in 2020 by G. Schirmer and Hal Leonard. Two productions of Cinderella are released on DVD, by Sony Classical and by the Vienna State Opera.

Media attention and recognition

Deutscher is the subject of a BBC documentary directed by Alan Yentob and a CBS 60 Minutes programme, which later wins an Emmy Award. She also appears on television programmes including The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Today. Her public profile is shaped early on by her youth and prodigious output, but she repeatedly says that she wants her music to be taken seriously and does not want to be defined by comparisons with Mozart.

She receives the European Culture Prize (Young Generation Award) in 2019 and the Beijing Music Festival Young Artist Award the same year. She is also named by Stern as one of its “Heroes of Tomorrow” in 2019, and receives the Leonardo da Vinci International Award from 11 European Rotary Clubs in 2021.

Life and studies

Deutscher moves with her family to Vienna in 2018, which she describes as her musical home. In 2021, she is admitted to the conducting degree at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, where she studies with Johannes Wildner.