Maria Prinz is a rare example of a pianist who has gained equal acclaim as a soloist and as an accompanist for singers, instrumentalists, and chamber players. She is also an important educator. Prinz was born in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. Her father, Konstantin Iliev, was a noted conductor and composer, and he gave his daughter her first lessons. She attended the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in what was then East Berlin, studying piano with Rudolf Dunckel, and went on for private lessons in Vienna with Jörg Demus, one of the leading accompanists of the day, and in Paris with Yvonne Lefébure. Prinz has performed concertos with leading orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and the Sofia Symphony; she has maintained ties with her home country even after moving to Germany and then Austria. In demand as a recitalist, Prinz has toured Europe, the U.S., and Japan, and in 2006, she toured internationally with a recital series called "Mozart and His Contemporaries," in honor of Mozart's 250th birthday. She has performed at major summer venues, including the Salzburg Festival and the Pacific Music Festival of Sapporo, Japan. As an accompanist, Prinz has worked with an unusually wide variety of collaborators, including flutist Dieter Flury, clarinetist Alfred Prinz, and baritone Matthias Goerne. In the late 2010s, she began to partner frequently with soprano Margarita Gritskova. Prinz began her recording career on the Gega label with an album featuring keyboard concertos of Haydn and Mozart. She made several more albums for Gega before moving to Naxos in 2013 for an album of Mozart violin sonatas transcribed for flute, joining flutist Patrick Gallois. She has made several albums with Gritskova for Naxos, including, in 2020, Prokofiev: Songs and Romances. Prinz has taught at Vienna's University of Music and the Performing Arts since 1987. ~ James Manheim