More than kid’s play

The Mormon University campus on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem will host a concert with a difference at 8 p.m. on October 12.

By BARRY DAVIS
NINE-YEAR-OLD British musician-composer Alma Deutscher (photo credit: PR)
NINE-YEAR-OLD British musician-composer Alma Deutscher
(photo credit: PR)
The delightful auditorium of the Mormon University campus on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem will host a concert with a difference at 8 p.m. on October 12, as part of its Sunday Evening Classics series. The classical repertoire includes two sonatas for violin and piano, an andante for violin, viola and piano – seven works in total – all composed by nine-year-old British musician-composer Alma Deutscher.
Deutscher has already performed here on several occasions over the past two years, and last year’s Voice of Music Festival at Kfar Blum included a performance of an opera by the youngster. Deutscher will play piano and violin on some of the works. The concert will also feature viola player Itamar Ringel and pianist Tal Samnon.
Deutscher started playing the piano at the age of two and added the violin a year later. When she was four, she started improvising on the piano, and that was quickly followed by initial attempts at composing. The latter included arias for an opera about a pirate called Don Alonzo. When she was six, she composed her first full piano sonata, one movement of which will open the forthcoming concert, and she has since composed music for piano, violin, viola, cello and a string quartet, as well as arias and a short opera called The Sweeper of Dreams.
In 2013, a string quartet by Deutscher was premiered at the Crans Montana Classics Festival in Switzerland, conducted by internationally renowned violinist Shlomo Mintz, and another quartet was commissioned by the Endellion String Quartet in England and premiered last month.
She is scheduled to appear as a soloist with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra next June. Deutscher’s first CD, The Music of Alma Deutscher, was released in 2013, and features a selection of her compositions.
Alma is currently working on a full-length opera, called Cinderella.
Tickets are free and can be obtained at concerts@jc.byu.ac.il, or by sending stamped self-addressed envelope to: Concerts, P.O. Box 19604, Jerusalem, 91198. Members of Sunday Evening Classics audiences may make donations at the end of the concert.