Alma Deutscher

Alma Deutscher, born in 2005, began playing the piano at the age of two and the violin a year later. She soon started improvising her own melodies at the keyboard. At six, she composed her first complete piano sonata, followed a year later by the short opera The Sweeper of Dreams. At the age of nine, she wrote a concerto for violin and orchestra. At twelve, she composed a piano concerto, which she premiered with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, captivating both audiences and critics. Austria’s most widely read newspaper wrote, “With supple, powerful, opulent tones, this child creates musical wonders.”

She has performed her Violin Concerto and Piano Concerto with orchestras on three continents, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, and the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra. In 2019, she made her sold out debut at Carnegie Hall in New York with a concert devoted entirely to her own compositions.

Her first full length opera, Cinderella, premiered in Vienna when she was eleven years old and attracted worldwide attention, accompanied by extensive media coverage in Europe and North America. In 2017, Opera Today described a sold out production at Opera San Jose as “the operatic event of a lifetime, with the audience rising to its feet in jubilation.” The opera has since been performed at several houses across Europe, including the Vienna State Opera.

In 2023, her third opera, Des Kaisers neue Walzer, commissioned by the Salzburg State Theater, premiered in Salzburg. In 2025, her ballet The Euterpides received its world premiere by the American Contemporary Ballet in Los Angeles.

At the age of sixteen, Alma Deutscher was admitted to study conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, becoming the youngest person ever accepted. That same year, she conducted the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra. She made her operatic conducting debut in 2022 at Opera San Jose as music director of a revival of Cinderella. In 2024, she returned there to conduct Mozart’s The Magic Flute, followed in 2026 by Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci. Her conducting engagements in 2026 include the New Japan Philharmonic in Tokyo, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra in Vienna, the Theater für Niedersachsen Philharmonie in Hildesheim, the New Year’s Concert at the Stefaniensaal in Graz, and a recording with the London Symphony Orchestra in London.

Zubin Mehta described Alma Deutscher as “one of the greatest musical talents of our time.” Sir Simon Rattle told the BBC, “Alma is a force of nature. I do not know if I have ever met anyone at that age with such an astonishing range of gifts.” The French newspaper Le Figaro wrote, “Alma Deutscher is a stick of dynamite.”

Her music has been released on CD and DVD. The first CD of her compositions, The Music of Alma Deutscher, appeared when she was eight years old. In 2019, Sony Classical released her second album, the solo piano recording From My Book of Melodies. German public broadcasting wrote, “The poetry of Franz Schubert, the melancholy of Chopin, the grace, lightness, and brilliance of Mozart, all of this can be found in Deutscher’s piano treasures.” The production of Cinderella at Opera San Jose is also available on DVD from Sony Classical.

Alma Deutscher has frequently been the subject of international cultural coverage. In depth portraits have appeared in leading newspapers worldwide, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times, as well as in numerous major European daily newspapers. She has also appeared in television programs around the globe. In 2017, the BBC dedicated a one hour documentary to her, and she was the subject of an extensive feature on CBS’s 60 Minutes.