From My Book of Melodies by Alma Deutscher out now

FROM MY BOOK OF MELODIES, the piano portfolio by Alma Deutscher is now available in print and digitally, published by G. Schirmer Ltd., part of Wise Music Group.

This is the first publication to feature the piano music of young English composer and pianist, complementing her recorded album on Sony Classical. Critics describe her work as “indeed miraculous,” having “the poetry of Franz Schubert...the grace, lightness and brilliance of Mozart,” and “wit and spirit.”

Alma Deutscher says: ‘I started hearing melodies in my head when I was four years old. I pretended that they were songs from my imaginary country, which I called “Transylvanian”. (I don’t remember why I chose this name, but it had nothing to do with the real Transylvania.) When I was small, I couldn’t write the music down, so I played my melodies on the piano and my parents would sometimes record them. But as soon as I learnt to write music, I started writing my melodies down in a notebook so that I wouldn’t forget them. Actually, I don’t just have one book of melodies, but a few notebooks. In some of them I wrote down whole pieces. In others I wrote only the first few bars of the melodies. In 2019, I recorded a piano album for Sony Classical, where I chose one melody from each year of my life, from ages four to fourteen. And all the pieces from the album are included in this book. But maybe I should explain: the age when the melody first came to me is not always the same as when I composed the whole piece based on this melody. Very often, I would note down a melody, and then use it only later, sometimes years later, when I was composing a piece in which this melody would fit. I hope you will enjoy playing these pieces.’

Buy ‘From My Book of Melodies’ online now