Pianist Margarita Höhenrieder is a musician highly prized in specialist circles, especially as a chamber player. She is also an influential educator.

Höhenrieder was born in Munich in 1956 and has spent much of her career in that city. She studied in Munich with Anna Stadler and Ludwig Hoffmann and won international competitions as a youth after giving her first recital at age 11. Höhenrieder traveled to the U.S. for work with Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. Another important mentor was pianist Alfred Brendel, whom Höhenrieder counted as a personal friend. Höhenrieder has appeared as a concerto soloist with top orchestras both in Germany and abroad, including the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the Gewandhausorchester of Leipzig, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. She has performed chamber music with Brendel and with a variety of other prestigious collaborators, including the Gewandhaus Quartet, clarinetist Sabine Meyer, and cellist Julius Berger. She has performed commissioned and performed several contemporary works and has had an ongoing association with composer Harald Genzmer. His last major work, Wie ein Traum am Rande der Unendlichkeit, for flute and piano, was dedicated to Höhenrieder, who premiered it in 2009 with flutist Emmanuel Pahud. Höhenrieder has been especially significant as an educator, becoming a professor of piano at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg in 1984; she was one of the youngest music professors in Germany at the time. In 1991, she moved to the Musikhochschule München.

Höhenrieder has performed on a variety of chamber music recordings and has issued several solo albums. In 2003, she joined the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen and conductor Johannes Wildner for a recording of the piano concertos of Robert and Clara Schumann. She has recorded mostly for the Solo Musica label, both as a soloist and as a chamber player, and she joined cellist Julius Berger on that label for a recording of Beethoven's complete works for cello and piano in 2020. ~ James Manheim, Rovi