‘I am not sure she is desperately keen to be playing the piano or violin on stage in front of a large audience,’ says Guy. Does she ever feel left out? Guy and Janie respond by saying that of course both girls are special, very special, and point out that Helen is a different character. She is also taught via Skype from Switzerland by a specialist in a method, used in Italy in the 18th and 19th centuries, that teaches children composition in a playful way.īut what about Helen? I say. ‘Even with her friends, Alma plays very intensely, and after that she will say, “Now I have to be on my own for a bit and dream.” It would be difficult to do that in school.’Īlma was behind the move to Surrey, owing to her having lessons with two teachers from the nearby Yehudi Menuhin School. ‘Her needs are different and it’s quite difficult for any school, even with the best intentions, to cater for someone like that,’ says Guy. But her parents believe Alma wouldn’t have thrived in mainstream education anyway. She seems thrilled to be teaching her daughters ‘about fossils or Portuguese explorers, Tudors and Stuarts, or whatever it is’. Janie, who has given up her university job, is also a huge support, home-schooling both girls. These days she does most of the inputting herself, and Guy helps ‘with the more tricky features’. ‘Alma was never particularly technologically minded,’ he says. When Alma was younger, Guy, who now works from home writing books on linguistics, would input Alma’s written compositions on to the computer. ‘She outstripped us, maybe even at seven.’ Alma’s parents bought her first violin when she was three, paid for a teacher, nurtured her gifts, taught her what they know.
A musical prodigy, in particular, hinges on parental involvement. ‘It wasn’t really anything unusual for me.’īut of course a child prodigy – as David Henry Feldman and Lynn T Goldsmith, both experts in the field, have pointed out – ‘is a group enterprise’. ‘I always had little melodies in my head,’ she explains. We should pay attention to that.’ She has the ability to name any note she hears with the effortlessness that most people can name a colour.Īlma composed her first piece before she was four. ‘I remember thinking, that’s a bit unusual. She sang something like “shashi shashi shashi sha” – but the notes were pitch perfect,’ says Guy.
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