[2] After passing her School leaving exam ("Abitur") Annerose Schmidt transferred to the Leipzig Music Academy where she studied between 1953 and 1957,[2] and where she was taught by Hugo Steurer.
[3] This proved an effective launch for an international playing career which over the next few years took her on concert tours to Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
[3] Her repertoire embraced almost eighty piano concertos from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including those by Mozart, Beethoven, Bartók, Chopin and Ravel.
She played the entire piano repertoire of Robert Schumann and Brahms, but her range also encompassed some contemporary music.
[2] From 1958 she was able to travel to the west, performing with leading conductors and top orchestras in Finland, Sweden, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria.