Alice Sara Ott

From her early days as a recognized piano prodigy, Alice Sara Ott developed a mature career filled with critical praise and secured an agreement with the Deutsche Grammophon label, yielding a fresh partnership with electronic musician Ólafur Arnalds.

Munich marked the site of her birth on August 1, 1988, to a civil engineer father and a pianist mother. Piano lessons began at age four, followed the next year by a finals appearance at a youth event in Munich before capacity crowds. Victory at seven in Germany's Jugend Musiziert competition inaugurated an extended streak of junior contest triumphs. Matriculation at the Salzburg Mozarteum occurred at twelve, where studies proceeded under Karl-Heinz Kämmerling. Strong audience approval greeted her 2005 solo turn with the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23, prompting repeated visits to Japan alongside engagements across the U.S. and Europe; a 2008 emergency substitution for Murray Perahia likewise produced a standing ovation that enlarged her profile.

Deutsche Grammophon introduced her first release the following year, a program of Liszt's Transcendental Etudes. The label also documented and issued a live Munich Philharmonic program from 2010 pairing Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major. More than ten further Deutsche Grammophon projects appeared thereafter. One widely noted departure, The Chopin Project, united her with electronic musician Ólafur Arnalds. Public disclosure of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis arrived in 2019, yet performances and recordings continued unabated. Wonderland, her 2021 Deutsche Grammophon album, explored the music of Edvard Grieg.