12-Year-Old Piano Prodigy Takes Four Notes Randomly Picked from a Hat and Instantly Uses Them to Improvise a Sonata

Last fall, 60 Min­utes spent some time with Alma Deutsch­er, a prodi­gy on the piano and the vio­lin. As her Wikipedia page tells us, “At age six she com­posed her first piano sonata. At age sev­en, she com­plet­ed her first major com­po­si­tion, the opera The Sweep­er of Dreams. Aged nine, she wrote a con­cer­to for vio­lin and orches­tra, which she pre­miered in a 2015 per­for­mance.” And at “the age of ten she com­plet­ed her first full-length opera, Cin­derel­la, which had its Euro­pean pre­miere in Vien­na on 29 Decem­ber 2016 under the patron­age of con­duc­tor Zubin Mehta.” Fast for­ward to age twelve, you can watch Alma pull off some­thing that, at this point, should­n’t come as a sur­prise. Above, 6o Min­utes cor­re­spon­dent Bob Pel­ley pulls four ran­dom notes out of a hat. Then, soon enough, Deutsch­er uses the notes to start improv­ing a sonata. Watch more of her per­for­mances on her YouTube chan­nel. And find more prodi­gy per­for­mances in the Relat­eds right below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces 7‑Year-Old Yo-Yo Ma: Watch the Young­ster Per­form for John F. Kennedy (1962)

Great Vio­lin­ists Play­ing as Kids: Itzhak Perl­man, Anne-Sophie Mut­ter, & More

Maria Anna Mozart Was a Musi­cal Prodi­gy Like Her Broth­er Wolf­gang, So Why Did She Get Erased from His­to­ry?

Eight-Year-Old Drum Prodi­gy Plays Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times Bad Times;” Robert Plant Watch­es in Won­der