Perhaps Deutscher will gradually develop her own equivalent of the mature characteristics of the other works on the program, the vivid instrumental color of Ginastera’s Variaciones concertantes and the abrupt and profound shifts of temperament in Elgar’s Enigma Variations.
#Alma piano prodigy full
Even so, even Mendelssohn didn’t write any of his mature masterpieces until he was 16, and Mozart didn’t reach full maturity until he was a couple years older than that. Still, it’s bland and anodyne enough that it’s hard to suspect it would be played if it weren’t a curiosity by a precocious child. Many pieces of this kind from the 19th century survive in the repertoire, and the fact that this one dates from 2015 should not be held against it. This concerto doesn’t aim at deep or transcendent genius, but it also isn’t anything less than pleasant and attractive. The traditional tricks of the 19th-century violin concerto trade are all conventionally followed: display of sawing or trilling, soloist and orchestra trading off, cadenzas, and so on, all coming just as one normally expects. So does the rhythmically energetic overture to Deutscher’s opera Cinderella, also played at this concert, which could pass for the overture to some lost light opera of the Second Empire. The slow movement and perky finale sound more French. The dark-toned first movement sounds as if Mendelssohn had written his “Scottish” Symphony as a violin concerto. Startling or unusual instrumental effects only appear occasionally. The concerto’s harmonic language is diatonic and benign. Her idiom, most unusually for a composer of today, is that of 19th-century popular classics. Alma Deutscher at the pianoĭeutscher is thus an accomplished composer within her chosen idiom. Themes are elaborated or extended, but don’t get put to much development, apart from one solid fugato. Contrast is gentle, provided by changes in mood, rhythmic figures, or meter rather than by key juxtaposition. Her orchestration is light, with generous wind solos, and never overbalances the violin.
She favors simple sectional forms, well-joined without seams showing, and eschewing bloat. Melodies, attractive more for their distinct rhythmic patterns than for curvature of line, are the heart of her concerto. As a composer, Deutscher is, by her own declaration, a melodist, who believes that the purpose of music is to counteract and heal the pain and ugliness of the world.
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