Alma Deutscher takes a stand in Vienna

Like many classical music fans, I was introduced to Alma Deutscher several years ago via a 60 Minutes report. I was struck by her musicianship and her devotion to creating melodies. I have lamented long and hard about the demise of melody in modern classical compositions. In Alma Deutscher, I saw the champion that melody needed. On March 4, her new operatic musical premiered. Alma has evolved into an 18-year-old paladin for melody.

For those not familiar with Alma, she is, in many ways, Mozart reincarnated as a precocious British girl. She plays the violin and piano at a concert level–like Mozart. She has composed a concerto for each instrument and performs them herself. She improvises like Mozart. Now, like Mozart, she has moved to Vienna.

In 2019 she debuted to a sold-out audience at Carnegie Hall. The concert was dedicated to her compositions and it was a resounding success. Her Waltz of the Sirens from that concert is available on YouTube and I found it to be a revelation.

Before the performance, Alma explained that she’s been told that melody and beautiful harmonies are not acceptable in serious classical music because, “In the 21st Century music must reflect the ugliness of the modern world. In this waltz, instead of trying to make my music artificially ugly...I went in exactly the opposite direction. I took some ugly sounds from the modern world and I tried to turn them into something more beautiful, through music.”

Is there a better definition of the role of art in society? An artist takes the ugliness of the world and transforms it into something sublime and beautiful. I was always under the impression that one of classical music’s primary roles was to show the potential beauty of the world. Alma’s Waltz of the Sirens does just that.

The musical that premiered, in Vienna, on March 4 is called The Emperor’s New Waltz. In it, Alma draws parallels between the function of classical melodies and popular tunes. The villain of the piece is a musical academic who pushes ugly modern classical music. In this, she is also like Mozart.

Mozart had a cultural axe to grind and grind it he did in both Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro. Alma is doing the same thing. She has identified her cultural issue and is making her case with her music and it's not an abstract issue such as global warming. The issue is one that she is intimately involved with and her heart is in it and that’s the seed of something great.