18-year-old music prodigy Alma Deutscher will debut in Hong Kong with City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong on Sunday 4 February at 7:30pm at Hong Kong City Hall. The concert will showcase her outstanding multi-talents as a composer, solo violinist, solo pianist and conductor.

Alma Deutscher

Born in 2005 in Basingstoke, UK, Alma Deutscher started playing the piano when she was two years old and the violin when she was three. At four, she would sit for hours at the piano, working out melodies from her imaginary world that she called Transylvanian.

At six, she composed her first piano sonata. At seven, she completed the short opera The Sweeper of Dreams, and at nine, a concerto for violin and orchestra. At ten, she wrote her first full-length opera, Cinderella, which had its premiere in Vienna in 2016, when Alma was eleven. Alma is undoubtedly a musical prodigy, but don’t call her a new Mozart.

Alma Deutscher at 11 years old, by Daniel Hambury, 2016

Alma’s early musical education focused on creative improvisation, following the Partimenti method, which was developed in 18th century in Italy. Since her childhood, creativity came from her imaginary world Transylvanian, which helped her composing. She made up her own land with its own language and composers named Antonin Yellowsink, Ashy, Shell and Flara. These imaginary composers each had a different musical style, and Alma credited them for inspiring her early compositions.

At fourteen, she received the European Culture Prize at the Vienna State Opera (2019). The same year, she made her debut at the Carnegie Hall in New York in an concert dedicated to her own compositions. Her opera Cinderella has since been performed on three continents, and was described as “a once-in-a-lifetime opera-going event that had audiences standing and cheering”.

Alma Deutscher

At sixteen, Alma was admitted to the conducting degree at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (2021), the youngest student ever to be admitted.

She has appeared in prestigious festivals such as the Lucerne Festival, Aix-en-Provence Festival, and Beijing Music Festival. She has played with orchestras such as the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra.

As a child prodigy and a multitalented musician, she quickly caught the attention of the media. She has ​been featured prominently in the international press and she also appeared in numerous television programs across the world. In 2017, when she was twelve years old, she was even the subject of an hour long BBC Documentary and a CBS 60 Minutes documentary.

Alma Deutscher

Alma’s music has been noted for the beauty of its melodies, which often arrive in her dreams. She explained that the opening of her first short opera The Sweeper of Dreams came to her fully formed in a dream, as well as the theme of a set of piano variations in E-flat major, which eventually became the basis of the third movement of her piano concerto. 

But don’t believe these compositions are not the fruit of hard work as well. While she hears melodies in her head in spontaneous moments of inspiration, she’s dedicated to the laborious process of composing complete polished pieces based on these melodies. 

Alma has constantly shown her determination to compose “beautiful” music and to bring back melody and harmony to modern classical music. People and critics have regularly said that beautiful melodies are not acceptable in classical music of the 21st century, which should reflect the complexity and “ugliness” of the modern world. But Alma doesn’t want to add more ugliness to the world. She simply wants to compose music that she finds beautiful.

For her premiere in Hong Kong, Alma will appear as soloist in the performance of two of her solo concerto compositions: the concerto for violin in G minor and the concerto for piano in E flat major. She will also conduct Waltz of the Sirens, one of her compositions for orchestra which is heavily inspired by the street noises and sirens in Vienna.

More details on her concert in Hong Kong can be found here: Alma Deutscher + CCOHK.

Tickets can be booked here: https://www.urbtix.hk/event-detail/11149/