Alma Deutscher

Alma Deutscher, born 2005, is a composer, violinist and pianist. She started playing the piano when she was two years old and the violin when she was three. Soon afterwards she started improvising simple melodies on the piano. At six, she completed her first piano sonata, and at 7 a short opera, The Sweeper of Dreams. There followed various compositions for violin, piano, and chamber ensembles. Aged 9, she composed a concerto for violin and orchestra, which she premiered in Spain in 2014. Aged 12, she completed her first piano concerto, which she premiered in Austria in 2017 to the jubilation of the public and the press. Her first full-length opera, Cinderella, was first performed in a chamber version in Israel in 2015, and orchestral versions have been staged in Vienna (2016) and in San Jose, California (2017), in a production that was released on DVD with Sony Classical. A children’s version of the opera was staged by the Vienna State Opera in 2018 and revived in 2019. A further revised and expanded version of the opera will be staged by the Salzburg State Theatre in the 2020/21 season, with the Mozarteum Orchestra. A new opera by Alma Deutscher has been commissioned by the Salzburg State Theatre.

Her orchestral compositions, including her concert waltz for large orchestra, Siren Sounds, have been performed by various orchestras in Europe and North America.

Deutscher’s first piano solo album, From My Book of Melodies, was released by Sony Classical in 2019, and is published by G.Schirmer Ltd.

Conductor Zubin Mehta described Alma Deutscher as “one of the greatest musical talents today.” Sir Simon Rattle told the BBC: “Alma is a force of nature. I don’t know that I’ve come across anyone of that age with quite such an astonishing range of gifts. I haven’t really seen anything like it.” Composer Jörg Widmann said he had never met a talent like hers before.

In 2019, Deutscher received the European Culture Prize at the Vienna State Opera. The German Magazine Stern elected her as one of twelve ‘Heroes of Tomorrow’ in 2019.

Alma Deutscher made her debut in Carnegie Hall in New York in 2019, in a concert dedicated to her own compositions, where she performed both her piano concerto and violin concerto with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and conductor Jane Glover. As a soloist playing her own compositions, she has also appeared in prestigious festivals such as the Lucerne Festival, Aix-en-Provence Festival, and Beijing Music Festival, and with orchestras such as Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Mozarteum Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra.

Deutscher has featured prominently in the international press, with major features in, amongst many others, the New York Times, Financial Times, Le Figaro, Die Zeit, and in almost all prominent newspapers of Europe and the US. She has also appeared on the front page of the China Daily. She has featured in numerous television programs across the world. In 2017 she was the subject of an hour long BBC1 Documentary and of a CBS 60 Minutes documentary.

In 2020, her YouTube channel had more than 100,000 subscribers and 12 million views.