Nils Anders Mortensen was born in Flekkefjord in 1971. He began playing piano at age three, and in 1986 he won the Norwegian Young Pianist Competition. He studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music, École Normale in Paris, and Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover with Einar Steen-Nokleberg. Other important teachers have been Tatjana Nikolajeva and Hans Leygraf. He has won international prizes and grants. In 1998 he won the Mozarteum Prize in Salzburg. In 2004 Mortensen received the Robert Levin Memorial Prize. He recorded piano concertos of Geirr Tveitt with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra. His solo album Im Freien, with music of Debussy, Grieg, and Bartok, was released in 2012 to glowing reviews. Johannes Brahms' Sonata no. 3 for piano, opus 5, bears impressive testament to the young composer's formidable gift as a composer and pianist. "In its heroic scale, unconventional layout, and high quality of thought it was one of the most impressive sonatas since those of Beethoven and Schubert," writes music critic Calum MacDonald, who further suggests that Brahms wrote his sonata as a response to Liszt's B minor sonata, which Brahms had heard Liszt play in the summer of 1853. The sonata opus 5 was the last work for solo piano in the genre that Brahms would write. The two Rhapsodies op. 79 were composed in 1879 when Brahms was in his mid-forties and at the peak of his career. These two compositions are the largest free-standing single-movement piano pieces Brahms had written since the Scherzo, op. 4. The Rhapsodies are dedicated to Elizabet von Herzogenberg, Brahms' student and lover. For the Ballad op. 10, no. 1, Brahms was inspired by the Scottish ballad Edward (which he later set for vocal duet in his opus 75).