Maria Grinberg (Russian: Mария Израилевна Гринберг, Marija Israilevna Grinberg; September 6, 1908 – July 14, 1978) was a Russian pianist. She was born in Odessa, Russian Empire. Her father was a Hebrew scholar and her mother taught piano privately. Until the age of 18, Maria took piano lessons from Odessa's noted teacher David Aisberg. Eventually she became a pupil of Felix Blumenfeld (who also taught Vladimir Horowitz) and later, after his death, continued her studies with Konstantin Igumnov at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1935, she won the Second Prize at the Second All-Union Pianist Competition. Grinberg became a major figure of the Russian piano school. However, in 1937 both her husband and her father were arrested and executed as "enemies of the people". The pianist was fired by the state-run management and got a job as an accompanist of an amateur choreography group. During that time, she occasionally participated in concert performances playing timpani. Somehow, she later was readmitted as a piano soloist. She became a much-sought-after pianist in Moscow, with concerts in Leningrad, Riga, Tallinn, Voronezh, Tbilisi, Baku and other cities all over the Soviet Union. At the age of 50, after Joseph Stalin died, she was finally allowed to travel abroad. In all, Grinberg went on 14 performing tours – 12 times in the Soviet bloc countries and twice in the Netherlands where she became a nationally acclaimed figure. Critics compared her performances with those of Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, and Clara Haskil. Only at the age of 55, was she granted her first – and last – honorary title of Distinguished Artist of the Russian Soviet Federation. At 61, she was given a professorship at the Gnessin Institute of Music, where she had a close friendship with pianist Maria Yudina, who said Grinberg was the "one person she wanted to play at her funeral". Among those on the long list of her pupils are Michael Bischoffberger, Naum Shtarkman and Regina Shamvili. In 1970, her 13-LP album set featuring all of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas was released. This was the first time a Russian pianist recorded the complete set of the Beethoven piano sonatas. Three months before Grinberg's death in 1978, a review by critic Yudenich in the Sovetskaya Muzyka magazine called these recordings "a true feat of art". When she was in her late 40s, she noticed that her vision had become significantly worse. She addressed the