Alma Deutscher

Deutscher worked across composer, pianist, violinist and conductor. This article rests on 9 catalogued compositions, 2 published texts and 2 issued recordings drawn from named institutional registers. Every statement below returns to a source shown in the evidence panel; where the record is silent or divided, the article says so instead of resolving it.

• Name — Alma Deutscher • Birth Name — Alma Elizabeth Deutscher • Born — 19 February 2005 • Birthplace — Basingstoke, England • Notable Works — Cinderella Waltz of the Sirens • Education — University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna • Occupation — * Composer • conductor • pianist • violinist • Mother — Janie Deutscher • Father — Guy Deutscher • Website — www.almadeutscher.com

Alma Elizabeth Deutscher was born on 19 February 2005, in Basingstoke, England. She is the daughter of literary scholar Janie (Steen) and linguist Guy Deutscher. Deutscher also has a younger sister, Helen Clara. She began playing piano at the age of two, followed by violin at three. Her strong affinity to music was apparent from an early age. She could sing in perfect pitch before she could speak, and she could read music before she could read words. In a 2017 interview with the Financial Times, Deutscher said: "I remember when I was three and I was listening to a lullaby by Richard Strauss, I loved it! I especially loved the harmony; I always call it the Strauss harmony now. And after it finished I asked my parents 'How could music be so beautiful?'" She received a little violin as a present on her third birthday, and while her parents thought it would just be another toy, she was "so excited by it and tried playing on it for days on end", so her parents decided to find her a teacher. Within a year she was playing Handel sonatas. At four she was improvising on the piano, and by five, had begun writing down her own compositions. These first written notations were unclear, but by age six, she could write clear compositions and had composed her first piano sonata, a recording of which was released in 2013. At seven, she composed her first short opera, The Sweeper of Dreams, at nine, a violin concerto, and her first full-length opera at age ten. Until the age of 16, Deutscher was educated at home. She was registered for a school in England when she was five, but after attending the first orientation day, she came back in tears, and told her parents: "they haven't taught me to read and write". Her parents then decided to educate her at home. They later explained on the BBC Documentary Imagine and on CBS's 60 Minutes that they were led to choose home education by their realization that their daughter's "volcanic imagination" and creativity were essential to her well-being, and they came to the conclusion that the freedom required for this intense creativity and imagination cannot be provided in a school. Deutscher herself told the BBC when she was ten: "I never want to go to school. I have to go outside and get fresh air, and read." Two years later she explained to the Financial Times: "I think that I learn at home in one hour what it would take at school five hours to learn". In his 2017 BBC Documentary about Alma Deutscher, Alan Yentob described this intense world of imagination, in which Deutscher had created an imaginary country called "Transylvanian", with its own language and above all its own music. "I made up my own land with its own language and there are beautiful composers there, named Antonin Yellowsink and Ashy and Shell and Flara". These imaginary composers each had a different musical style, and Deutscher assigned various of her early compositions to these composers. Deutscher's early musical education focused on creative improvisation, following a method of teaching called Partimenti, which was developed in eighteenth-century Italy, and which has been revived and popularized by Professor Robert Gjerdingen. Gjerdingen sent exercises for Alma Deutscher and commented on technical aspects of her composition, while she had lessons in improvisation with the Swiss musician Tobias Cramm. Deutscher thus initially became fluent in the musical grammar of eighteenth-century music, which she later described as her musical "mother tongue". Deutscher came to popular media attention in 2012, when she was seven, after writer and comedian Stephen Fry commented on her YouTube channel: "Simply mind-blowing: Alma Deutscher playing her own compositions. A new Mozart?" In 2014, a television program hosted by renowned pianist and pedagogue Arie Vardi, featuring performance and improvisation by Deutscher brought her to the attention of leading figures in the classical music world, including conductor Zubin Mehta. In the same year, a viral YouTube mashup video released by musician Kutiman featured an ostinato from one of Deutscher's early videos. In 2017, a CBS-60 Minutes feature with Scott Pelley about Deutscher created a stir and won an Emmy Award. In 2018, Deutscher moved with her family to Vienna. She explained to The New York Times in 2019: "I grew up on the music of Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, and Haydn. Musically speaking, I think that Vienna's always been my home." In 2021, she was admitted to the conducting degree at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, to study with conductor Johannes Wildner. At 16, she may have been the youngest student ever to be admitted to this conducting course, whose alumni include Zubin Mehta, Claudio Abbado and Kirill Petrenko. In the first years of her life, Deutscher was the subject of her father's linguistic experiments related to his professional research. In an effort to understand why ancient cultures did not use the term "blue" to describe the colour of the sky, he made sure never to inform his daughter that the sky was "blue". The development of her colour perceptions, and especially her insistence in an early age that the clear sky was "white", were reported in Guy Deutscher's 2010 book, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages. Deutscher is trilingual in English, German and Hebrew.

Deutscher's first completed opera, from age seven, is a short work inspired by Neil Gaiman's story, "The Sweeper of Dreams", with the text adapted from a libretto by Elizabeth Adlington. Parts of the score came to Deutscher in a dream. The first performance of the opera was in Israel in 2013. In the story, a job is advertised for a Sweeper of Dreams, who is to help people forget their nightmares. The three middle-aged men on the committee are shocked to discover that the only candidate, Alex, is a sixteen-year-old girl. Her interviewers mock her, because she "committed two terrible crimes: the first was being a child, the second was being female". The theme of female empowerment is recurrent in Deutscher's operas, and also dominates her full length opera, Cinderella. She told The New York Times in 2019: "I'm a very strong feminist and I'm really happy that I was born now, when girls are allowed to develop their talents." She said she is particularly attracted to stories of women overcoming adversity.

Deutscher's first opera is a full-length work based on the fairy tale of Cinderella, but with significant modifications to the plot, which in her version revolves around music: Cinderella herself is a composer, the prince is a poet, and a haunting melody that Cinderella sings to the prince as she flees from the ball takes the place of the glass slipper of the traditional tale. Deutscher explained that it was important for her that Cinderella is not just a pretty girl with a dainty foot. The prince falls in love with Cinderella because of her talent. Deutscher has worked on the opera over a period of at least five years, between the ages of nine and fifteen, producing successive expansions and revisions. The first (chamber) version was premiered in Israel in 2015, when Deutscher was ten. An orchestral version premiered in Vienna the following year, with conductor Zubin Mehta as patron of the production. Reports about the sold-out performances appeared in newspapers all over the world, and Viennese critics expressed their astonishment at the accomplishment of Deutscher's orchestral writing and at the beauty of her melodies. Deutscher further elaborated the work for the sold-out U.S. premiere in 2017 at Opera San Jose. The New Criterion called it an "opera of astounding wit, craft, and musical beauty... The sheer amount of orchestral and vocal invention is stunning", and predicted that Cinderella would find its way to Broadway. Opera Today described it as "a young talent's sensational burst to prominence... a once-in-a-lifetime opera-going event that had audiences standing and cheering." • Illustration — Alma Deutscher conducts her opera Cinderella in Opera San Jose, 2022 The Vienna State Opera staged its own adaptation for children in 2018, and 2020. In 2019–20 Deutscher undertook a further revision of the opera for a production at the Salzburg State Theatre, adding a children's chorus. In 2022 Deutscher made her U.S. debut as conductor, in a revival of the 2017 Opera San Jose production of Cinderella. The production was released on YouTube in 2023.

Deutscher's second full-length opera, "The Emperor's New Waltz" (Des Kaisers neue Walzer), was a commission of the Salzburg State Theatre and premiered there in March 2023. In interviews with the BBC and with German KlassikRadio, Deutscher explained the main themes and inspirations for this musical comedy: "First of all, I wanted to tell a beautiful love story, between two young people, but also between two musical worlds: classical music and pop music. Then I wanted to write a musical comedy that isn't only for opera fans, but also appeals to young people who otherwise have no access to classical music. And finally I wanted to parody the tuneless world of atonal contemporary classical music – music that only "clever people understand" – and to the rest of us just sounds like noise". Deutscher said that she wanted to move away from the rigidity of the opera genre in this musical comedy: "My hero Jonas is a pop singer, he sings songs on the guitar, he raps over Mozart. But at the end he also sings in a ten-part fugue. I wanted to show that opera and musicals are much closer than one thinks. My dream is that young people go to a musical, but then think: "Actually, there was also opera in it and it didn't hurt at all, it was even beautiful..." The Salzburg State Theatre describes the plot as follows: "Mozart versus modern beats, shrill dissonance against harmonic beauty. Inspired by the fairy tale "The Emperor's New Clothes," the opera tells a story about pretence and truth and about the bonding power of music. The gardener and the rich heiress: Jonas and Leonie could hardly be more different. No wonder that the two can't stand each other. What unites them, however, is the dream of studying at the music academy. But Leonie's father, fashion mogul Rudolf Kaiser, thinks that her planned marriage to the renowned contemporary composer Anthony Swindelle will bring enough high culture into the family. Leonie decides to visit the university disguised as a boy, and comes across Jonas there. Together they discover that Swindelle is pursuing some self-serving plans."

• The Euterpides, premiered in 2025.

• The Sweeper of Dreams (mini-opera, composed age 7, 2012) • Cinderella, a full-length opera (written aged 10, and revived multiple times in subsequent years) • The Emperor's New Waltz, an opera commissioned by the Salzburg State Theatre, premiered in 2023.

• Dance of the Solent Mermaids (symphonic dance) • Violin Concerto in G minor • Piano Concerto in E-flat major • Waltz of the Sirens • Elmayer Waltz • Grinzinger Polka • Breaking News Polka • Fantasia on Japanese Songs (2025)

• The Lonely Pine Tree, song to words by H. Heine. (This piece appeared in public only in a piano solo arrangement, as part of the album From My Book of Melodies) • The Night Before Christmas, (song to words by C. Moore) • Near the Beloved, a song to words by Goethe • I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, a Christmas Carol to words based on a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• Andante for Violin and piano • Rondino (trio) in E-flat major for violin, viola, and piano • Quartet movement in A major (a piano arrangement appeared in the album From My Book of Melodies under the name Summer in Mondsee) • Viola Sonata in C minor (first movement) • Quartet movement in G major, Rondo • Violin Sonata (first movement) • Trio for violin, viola, and piano in D major (Cinderella Trio)

• Piano Sonata no. 1 in E-flat major (Composed: Oct. 2011, Premiered: Dec 4, 2011) • The Chase (Impromptu in C minor) • Sixty Minutes Polka • Ludwig Waltz no. 1 • Ludwig Waltz no. 2 • Piano Sonata no. 2 in E-minor • Impromptu in D-major "Sea and Mountains"

• "Alma's Piano Songs: an Album for Young Musicians" (A collection of piano pieces for children by Alma Deutscher).

Alma Deutscher was born on 19 February 2005 in Basingstoke. Deutscher held the nationality of United Kingdom. Deutscher was educated at University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (2021). Recorded father: Guy Deutscher. Deutscher worked as composer, pianist, violinist and conductor. Deutscher was active from 2011. Deutscher played the violin, the piano and the viola. Deutscher worked in British English and English.

Deutscher has played her own music as soloist with renowned orchestras across the world, including the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra (China), Lucerne Symphony Orchestra (Switzerland), Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke's (New York). She has also given recitals of her own compositions in the renowned Lucerne Festival (Switzerland) and Aix-en-Provence Festival (France). At the invitation of the Austrian Chancellor, she has performed at the Chancellery in Vienna on several state occasions, including in 2018 at a service commemorating the end of the Second World War in Europe. Notable live performances include: • Deutscher's performance aged 10 at the Google Zeitgeist Conference in 2015, where she appeared alongside physicist Stephen Hawking. • The opening concert of the Carinthischer Sommer (Carinthian Summer) Music Festival (Austria) in 2017, in which Deutscher performed as soloist both her own violin concerto and the world-premiere of her piano concerto, together with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. * • Illustration — Alma Deutscher performing her piano concerto in Carnegie Hall, 2019 Deutscher's sold out Debut in Carnegie Hall in New York in 2019. This concert, which received multiple standing ovations and which critics described as "a night of increasing musical wonder", was conducted by Dame Jane Glover with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, and was devoted exclusively to Deutscher's own compositions. It included her Violin concerto and Piano Concerto, both of which she again performed as a soloist, as well as highlights from her opera Cinderella and her concert waltz, Waltz of the Sirens. Deutscher introduced her waltz to the audience by explaining her musical philosophy and her determination to bring back harmony and beauty to modern classical music, and to find beauty even in the ugly sounds of the modern world. The event was streamed live by Medici.TV. A recording of the Waltz of the Sirens from the concert has been watched more than 2.4 million times on YouTube. A later short excerpt of Deutscher herself conducting her Waltz of the Sirens went viral on TikTok in May 2022. Notable television appearances: • In 2017 Deutscher was the subject of an hour long BBC documentary directed by Alan Yentob. The documentary accompanied Alma Deutscher during the rehearsals for the premiere of her opera Cinderella in Vienna in 2016. • In 2017 Deutscher was also the subject of a CBS-60 Minutes documentary, which won an Emmy Award in 2018 for best "Arts, Culture, and Entertainment Report". • Aged 9, Deutscher appeared on the program Intermezzo With Arik of the renowned pianist and pedagogue Arie Vardi on Israeli Educational Television, in a performance and interview which brought her to the attention of conductor Zubin Mehta. Deutscher has appeared on television shows across the world, including The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and NBC Today. The first album of Deutscher's music, "The Music of Alma Deutscher" was released in 2013 when she was 8. In 2019, Sony Classical Records released "From My Book of Melodies", a piano album of Deutscher's compositions from ages of four to fourteen. Two productions of her opera Cinderella has been released on DVD, by Sony Classical and by the Vienna State Opera. Deutscher's collection of piano pieces, From My Book of Melodies, was published in 2020 by American classical music publishers G. Schirmer and Hal Leonard.

• From My Book of Melodies. Collection of Piano Pieces, G. Schirmer 2020, • Alma's Piano Songs. An Album for Young Pianists. Flara Music 2022, • Cinderella (Vocal Score). Flara Music 2022, • Violin Concerto in G minor (Vocal Score). Universal Edition 2024, UES106822-410. • Waltz of the Sirens (Score). Universal Edition 2024, UES107039-000. • Two Childhood Trios. Universal Edition 2024, UES107074-410.