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.
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.
[citation needed] 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".
[citation needed] 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".
Within a few months, she celebrated her 50th birthday by performing three piano concertos in one evening – Bach's f minor, Beethoven Third, and Rachmaninoff's Third with Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra.
[citation needed] Maria Grinberg died on July 14, 1978, in Tallinn, Estonia, ten weeks before her seventieth birthday.