What a story! I hope here life continues to be as happy as it was in this piece.
Alma Deutscher
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Alma DeutscherBornResidenceOccupationKnown forParent(s)Website Alma Elizabeth Deutscher (born February 2005) is an English composer, pianist, violinist, and child prodigy. At age six she composed her first piano sonata. At age seven, she completed her first major composition, the opera The Sweeper of Dreams. Aged nine, she wrote a concerto for violin and orchestra, which she premiered in a 2015 performance. [1]
At the age of ten she completed her first full-length opera, Cinderella, which had its European premiere in Vienna in 2016 under the patronage of conductor Zubin Mehta, [2] and its US premiere in San Jose, California a year later, in December 2017. At the age of twelve, Deutscher also premiered her first piano concerto. [3]
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Background
Deutscher was born in Basingstoke in 2005, [4] the daughter of literature professor Janie Deutscher née Steen and Israeli linguist Guy Deutscher. Both are amateur musicians. [5]
She began playing piano at the age of two, followed by violin at three. At four she was composing and improvising on the piano, and by five had begun writing down her compositions. These first written notations were unclear, but by six she could write clear compositions by hand and had composed her first piano sonata. At seven she composed her first short opera, at nine a violin concerto, and her first full-length opera at age ten. [6] [7]
According to her father, she could name the notes on a piano when she was two. "For her third birthday I bought her a little violin as a toy. She was so excited by it and tried playing on it for days on end, so we decided to try to find her a teacher. Within less than a year she was playing Handel sonatas." [8] [9]
In a 2012 interview with the BBC, Steen said: "At three she heard a lullaby by Richard Strauss, and she came to us and said, '...how can music be so beautiful?' She was struck by the beauty of it." [10]
Early publicityDeutscher's initial media exposure may be traced to writer and comedian Stephen Fry publicising her YouTube channel when she was seven. Guy Deutscher and Fry knew each other through a shared interest in linguistics. Deutscher's channel originally was produced for the private viewing of her relatives. Her father said: "Then Stephen Fry saw [her family videos] and tweeted on Twitter, and that's how it became known to his millions of followers. And from there very quickly reporters were onto it and it snowballed." On October 10, 2012, Fry wrote: "Simply mind-blowing: Alma Deutscher playing her own compositions. A new Mozart?", with a link to one of Deutscher's videos. [11] Television crews arrived at the family home the next day.
In September 2014, a viral YouTube mashup video released by Israeli musician Kutiman ("Give It Up") featured a 4-second ostinato assembled from pieces of one of Deutscher's early videos.
Guy Deutscher spoke of his concerns surrounding Alma's initial press coverage and explained that the family had been unprepared for the intense exposure, and that they view as their most important task to protect her and ensure that she has a happy childhood. [7] |
