Here is the Piano Concerto in E-Flat by Alma Elizabeth Deutscher, b. 2005 (age 13). The name is German, but she was born and raised in
England.
She performs it with the Joji Hattori conducting the Vienna
Chamber Orchestra, at the Carinthian Summer Festival in Austria.
The style of the work is classic to early Romantic, rather
like Chopin in some places, perhaps. That is remarkable, when you consider how
much commissioned work today is hyper modern and “useful” and clever (and
commissioning is turning into a political controversy of its own). This has
bearing on my own circumstances, which I will get back to later.
The first movement (Allegro, 17 minutes), opens with a full
orchestra ritornel (with a somewhat noble and majestic theme), and the second
subject is rather quiet. The coda
suddenly becomes majestic and builds up to a large climax on a pivot chord.
The second movement (Adagio, 10 min) is in the dominant key
of B-flat minor and is a bit sentimental.
The finale (a rondo, Allegro giocoso) starts out with a
theme that is almost Mozartean. The conclusion is not as convincing as the climax
of the first movement – to my own post-romantic ear, at least.
The obvious comparison will be Amy Beach.
Of course, there are various other examples of young composers
since Mozart. Eugen D’Albert’s first
Piano Concerto (patterned after Liszt) was composed largely at age 19 and
perhaps (in the enormous fugue and coda) comes across as an expression of white
hot cis male virility. Shostakovich wrote his first Symphony at 19. And James Pavel Shawcross, 18, entertains us
on YouTube with his presentations of different pianos, organs and percussion –
and I just found out he comes from an area exposed to the California wildfires. I’ll check further. “The young people will win.”
