Léonie Sonning Talent Prize 2019
While others danced to pop music, Anne Sofie danced to Vivaldi
It started with a toy piano from her parents when she was one. At the beginning, she was only strumming, but later she found out that she could play small melodies, and it did not take long before the limited number of piano keys were not sufficient. Hardly 8, she started piano lessons, and she replaced the toy piano with a real piano.
In her parents’ record collection, which primarily consisted of Vivaldi and Beethoven sonatas, Anne Sofie discovered the Pathétique Sonata for piano, and she made it her aim to be able to play the sonata one day. And while her friends were dancing to pop music, she preferred to dance to Vivaldi’s concerts for viola d’amore.
At 14, Anne Sofie was admitted to the MGK line, and she started her music studies at the same time as finishing the ninth grade. She was drawn to music, so instead of upper secondary school, she chose to continue at the MGK line with the aim of attending the Royal Academy of Music: “At the age of 14, you don’t think much about the choices you make. I just wanted to play the piano!”.
Important to be nervous
When Anne Sofie is going on stage, it is important for her to be nervous. “I have tried not to be nervous before a concert – and that’s not good!”. She gets the nervousness out of her system if she is very nervous before a concert and, when on stage, the nervousness is gone.
“Before a concert, I imagine how it is to be there. If I am playing at a new concert hall, I go online and look for pictures so that I can visualise how it will be to play there. If I am not nervous, it’s perhaps because I haven’t thought that much about it – and then it hits me right there when I’m on stage”.
The future is full of opportunities for Anne Sofie. If she could choose herself, she would mix playing solo concerts and chamber concerts with teaching. She loves teaching at all levels, especially when her pupils are really passionate about playing.
Anne Sofie Sloth Nilausen in brief
Born in 1988. Raised in Birkerød.
She studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music under Amalie Malling and Bohumila Jedličková and at Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf under Paolo Giacometti and Lisa Eisner-Smirnova.
She studies in the soloist class at the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, under Søren Rastogi, and
has performed as a solo and chamber musician in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Lithuania and Spain.
The scholarship from the Léonie Sonning Music Foundation
Anne Sofie will spend the scholarship from the Léonie Sonning Music Foundation on continued classes at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf.
