Sophie Sczepanek began playing the piano at the age of four. She has won many awards in competitions such as “Jugend Musiziert”, both as a soloist and as a chamber musician. Her enthusiasm for piano playing was sparked by her teachers Andrea Chanicki-Moser and Andreas Beckmann. After graduating from high school, she began studying piano pedagogy at the Folkwang University of the Arts (Essen, Germany) with Prof. Till Engel and Wolfgang Klein-Richter and directly won an Excellence Scholarship. She attended master classes with Prof. Arnulf von Arnim, Prof. Alexander Tselyakov and Prof. Charles Spencer, among others.
In addition to her solo studies, she began to devote herself more and more to the Lied and to working with singers. After her diploma in piano pedagogy, she completed a master’s degree in “Duo vokal für Pianisten” with Prof. Xaver Poncette (Folkwang UdK), which she fi nished with the highest grade. She received particularly formative impulses from Prof. Ilana Schapira-Marinescu.
In 2013 she won the Humperdinck special prize of the Cantando-parlando competition St. Augustin (Bonn, Germany) and participated in the WDR 3 Open Auditions in Cologne. From 2014-2018 she participated in the scholarship program of the Live Music Now Foundation, founded by Yehudi Menuhin.
Thanks to a scholarship from the DFJW (Deutsch-Französisches Jugendwerk), she was able to gain valuable experience at the conservatoire in Paris (PSPBB) with Prof. Ariane Jacob and Prof. Philippe Biros. In 2016 she won the Theodor Storm piano prize for best piano accompaniment at the international Lied master class with Prof. Charles Spencer and Prof. Ulf Bästlein.
In addition to a busy concert schedule as a Lied accompanist and chamber music partner at home and abroad (including Philharmonie Essen, Cité de la Musique de Paris), Sophie Sczepanek’s second great passion is teaching and music education.
