CRI听力:14-year-old British music prodigy performs in Beijing

14-year-old British music prodigy Alma Deutscher has performed at the ongoing Beijing Music Festival.

Before her performance, she disclosed she's planning a music project that may help promote Chinese melodies overseas.

"I've listened to some Chinese songs; folk songs and lullabies. I think it's really beautiful. And I think, to combine it with Chinese harmonies (melodies) could be really fun; maybe, to take with the Chinese melodies and combine them in a European style of harmonies and melodies and put them together."

Deutscher says she is fascinated by Chinese culture and this is part of the reason for her accepting the invitation to perform. She also wants to tour the Forbidden City.

"I don't know if I had time. But if I do, I would love to go there because I've read about it. I have had so much about it. And the Turandot opera takes place inside the Forbidden City. And so I would really like see it with my own eyes".
 

Deutscher is pianist, violinist, and composer. She is widely recognized as a prodigy whose "first language" is Mozart. She started playing the piano when she was two years old.

At age six she composed her first piano sonata.

At the age of ten, she wrote her first full-length opera, Cinderella, which had its European premiere in Vienna in 2016 under the patronage of conductor Zubin Mehta.