Alma the Wunderkind | Sunday Observer

Alma the Wunderkind

25 March, 2018

Some term her ‘Little Mozart’ ..... German media describes her as a “Wunderkind”.... conductor Simon Rattle declared that he was “absolutely bowled over” by her and her music... conductor Daniel Barenboim said of her “Every thing that cannot be learnt, she already has ....” composer Jorg Widmann has called her “an extraordinary phenomenon”... while Zubin Mehta described her as “a genius-one of the greatest talents of today”....

Thirteen year old Alma Elizabeth Deutscher, composer, pianist and violinist takes centre stage today after a highly successful premiere of her second opera Cinderella in Vienna in December 2016, conducted by Zubin Mehta as patron of the production. She received a standing ovation, and so too in California last year in December in San Jose. The opera was sung in English and performed with a large orchestra, choir and dancers, conducted by the British Jane Glover. According to reports Alma Deutscher performed on both the violin and piano during the opera as she did in the early productions not only in Cinderella but also in her first opera the Sweeper of Dreams.

In this modern age of space ships and Fire Girl you might wonder how Alma Deutscher tackled the fairy tale of Cinderella. As a matter of fact it was considerably different in story. It revolved around

music. The plot is set in an opera production company run by the evil stepmother and the two step sisters are portrayed as “talentless divas”. Cinderella is a natural composer with many beautiful melodies swimming around in her head, but she is not allowed to perform. By chance she finds a love poem which is captivating to her but does not know who the author of the poem is. She sets it to her own music but the melody is stolen by her step-sisters and sung at a singing competition during the ball.

However Cinderella is able to sing her melody to the Prince unaware that he wrote the lyrics. Likewise the Prince didn’t know that Cinderella composed the music to his lyrics. When Cinderella at the stroke of midnight flees away from the ball, the Prince goes in search of Cinderella not using a glass slipper but using a melody. In the end they find each other.

Alma Deutscher in an interview, expressed the fact “I didn’t want Cinderella just to be pretty. I wanted her to have her own mind and her own spirit. And to be a little bit like me. So I decided that she would be a composer.”

Born in Basingstoke, England, Alma Deutscher began playing the piano at the age of two, learnt the violin at the age of three. When she reached the young age of four she was composing and improvising on the piano and when she turned five she was writing down her compositions.

In an interview with the BBC her mother Janie Deutscher said at three years 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”.

According to the young composer music (and here I quote) “comes to me when I’m relaxing. I go and sit down on a seat or lie down. I like thinking about fairies a lot and princesses and beautiful dresses. When I try to get a melody it never comes to me. It usually comes to me when I’m resting or when I’m just sitting at the piano improvising or when I’m skipping with my skipping rope... when I am in an improvising mood, melodies burst from my fingertips...” She has described her purple skipping rope as a keypart of her process in composing. “I wave it around and melodies pour into my head”.

The premiere of Cinderella in Vienna resulted in many complimentary reviews for Alma Deutscher. Robert Schediwy was of the opinion that the opera was full of beautiful melodies and he feared that if the public continues to enjoy her music, the culture-theorists would consider it a threat and accuse her of “anachromism and musical inferiority.” However he hopes that Alma’s love of melody will help to give new life to the world of opera which is now pronounced dead and help it to appeal to a wider circle of classical music lovers.

But Alma put the lid on all these opinions when in February last year in an interview she said that many had mentioned to her not to compose beautiful melodies in the 21st century. But that music must reflect the complexity and ugliness of the modern world. Her thinking was “if the world is so ugly, then what’s the point in making it even uglier with ugly music? I hope people would stop telling me how it is allowed or not allowed to compose in the 21st century. I hope that in ten years time it will not be considered a crime to want to compose beautiful music”. 

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