12-year-old piano prodigy creates beauty from four randomly chosen notes

Alma Deutscher is a musical prodigy who composed her first opera by the age of 10

All it takes Alma Deutscher is four notes and 40 seconds.

And, suddenly, these wondrous notes lift off into the air - Deutscher is 12-years-old, a musical prodigy capable of improvising a short piano sonata in this manner, on the spot.

The YouTube star, who boasts 30,000 subscribers on her channel, demonstrated her skills for 60 Minutes and correspondent Scott Pelley. Pelley draws from a hat four cards with musical notes on them: which turn out to be B, A, E flat, and G. She tweaks B to B flat and puts the notes in G minor scale.

After sitting in silence for a moment, she launches into a fully formed piece. A composition heard only once, and never again. "I can't remember everything that I did in this improvisation," she says in the video. "I can write it down in my notebook, maybe, for when I'm writing a piece. But I can't remember the whole improvisation, though. I can never, ever, ever remember."

Deutscher started composing at age 4, explaining: "I just had these melodies and ideas in my head, and I would play them down at the piano. And sometimes my parents would think that I was just remembering music that I'd already heard before. But I said no, no, these are my melodies that I composed"

By the age of 10, she had already composed a full-length opera. She's a virtuoso both on the violin and the piano and has performed her compositions around the world. She's now set to stage her opera Cinderella in her American debut, which reimagines its lead as a composer, and the prince, a poet.

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