Alma Deutscher- piano concerto (world premiere, July 2017)

Alma Deutscher

Piano Concerto (world premiere, July 2017)

This is a recording of the first performance of Alma's piano concerto no. 1 in E-flat major, which was composed and performed last year, when she was 12.
I - Allegro 0:26, II - Adagio 17:09, III - Allegro giocoso 26:52
Carinthian Summer Festival, July 16, 2017
Vienna Chamber Orchestra, conductor: Joji Hattori.
An excerpt from Alma's programme notes for the concert:
The first movement represents the conflict between darkness and light. The orchestral introduction has just two happy bars of E-flat major in the beginning, but it then plunges into darkness on the third bar. The rest of the introduction is in minor, mostly in E-flat minor. But the entrance of the piano brings back the light, with a much happier version of the orchestral theme. The darkness tries to come back at some points, especially at the very end, but the light finally overcomes it.

I finished the second movement, the Adagio, in February this year (2017). Its main theme came to me when I was very sad: I was improvising on my grandmother’s piano, in her house, a few days after she died. The movement is in a rather unusual key, B-flat minor, which is perhaps not so comfortable for the orchestra, but it's the key in which I first heard the melody in my head, and I did not want to change it.

The third movement is two years older – it is a mixture between a Rondo and jocular variations over a theme, which I heard in the middle of the night when I was eight years old. During the movement, there is quite a lot of argument between the soloist and the orchestra. But in the end, the soloist and the orchestra make peace, and continue playing happily together.
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From a review of a later performance of this concerto in Vienna, by leading Austrian critic, Dr Wilhelm Sinkovicz: "…The world turns in a circle, but always sprouts new, beautiful flowers, if one only lets them sprout. Alma Deutscher’s music, which she presents on the piano with full commitment and with palpable pleasure, is full of extraordinarily original ideas and genuine surprises… Even just the transition from the cadenza to the coda of the first movement reveals the composer’s originality. And how, just before the final chord, she charmingly dissolves the harmonic knot which had been tied with a harmonic Coup in the first bars of the concerto – that mesmerizes. (Die Presse)