  Our next guest is just ten
years old. She's been described
as 'the new Mozart' and
you're about to hear why
She's thoroughly charmed audiences
around the world. We are so
excited to be able to welcome
her to Zeitgeist. Alma Deustcher
  How old were you when you realised
you had this frankly miraculous
musical gift. Well
as much as I can remember
myself, I was always
overwhelmed by music
I must have been 3
when I heard this beautiful
lullaby by Richard Strauss
  (sings) and after I heard
it I went to my parents
and asked them, 'How can music
be so beautiful?'
  Then when I was 4
then, I didn't know it was called
composing. I just had these
ideas and melodies running
in my head, and then I would
sit at the piano and try and play
them.
  Then when I was 5, then I wrote
them down in my notebook, and
I remember one of the first things
I ever composed was an
  opera of a story that
my mummy told me about a
pirate called Don Alonzo
You told us about how music
comes into your head and sometimes
you're not even aware of why it's
coming in, and you don't necessarily
even want it at that time. Can
you tell us more about
that process, about how the melodies
arrive? Well when I try
to get a melody, it never
comes to me. It usually comes to
me either when I'm resting
or when I'm just sitting at the piano
improvising, or when I'm
skipping with my skipping
rope. We've seen the skipping rope
here.
  Oh, even when I'm trying
to do-,
  even when I'm trying to do something
else and somebody's talking to me
or when I'm trying to do something
then I hear this beautiful
melody. I hear a melody
inside my head.
  It can be played by any instrument
  One time it's a human voice
singing, and a different time
it's a violin.
  Another time it's horns. Even
horns, sometimes.
  I just hear this melody. It
plays inside my mind. The difficult
bit is to then sit down
and with that idea to develop
it, and to combine it with other
ideas in a coherent
way. It's very easy just to
throw a soup of lots
of ideas which don't make any
sense together, but to sit
down and to develop it, and to
combine it, and then afterwards
to tweak it and polish it
that takes ages, sometimes
even years. I remember
when
  I was 6 and I wrote my piano
sonata-, As you do. Yes. I remember
when I was 6 and I wrote
my first piano sonata, I
already had all the ideas for
it but I couldn't imagine how
long it would take me
  to write that piano sonata, and
that was just a small piano sonata
Now I'm 10 and I'm writing
now a whole opera.
