Sophie Mautner was born in Berlin (West), where she began piano at the age of five. Although she was found to have perfect pitch early on, her real talent was discovered when she met Ingeborg Wunder, a professor at the Music Conservatoire in Berlin, who recommended the eight year-old Sophie Mautner to the renowned German professor, Karl-Heinz Kammerlig, who taught her partly at the Conservatoire in Hannover and partly at the "Mozarteum" in Salzburg.

Sophie Mautner began gaining considerable attention with her first few regional competitions, and later national. Within a year she was awarded first prize with distinction at the national competition "Jugend Musiziert", and again at the national talent competition in France, her mother's home country.

Contact with Nikita Magaloff and Gyorgy Sandor encouraged her to pursue a soloistic career. During her studies with Jan Ekier, the former president of the Warsaw Chopin Competition, she developed her intuitive musical talent and her musical judgement was enhanced by the Paris-based composer, Milosz Magin.

For some time at this point, the Russian pianist, Lazar Berman had been her mentor and Sophie Mautner had been one of his few master-class students. Her orchestral début took place when she was eleven years old. After two appearances with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, she gave recitals in France, Holland and Switzerland. These included benefit concerts for UNESCO in Paris, WHO in Geneva, as well as festival concerts. As well as various productions for television and radio, Sophie Mautner recorded her first CD of works by Chopin in 1995, after having signed an exclusive contract with Sony.

In September 1996, she was awarded in Dresden, the German record prize 'Echo' for this début CD. In the 1996/7 season, Sophie Mautner will perform in a number of major festivals in Germany, Switzerland and France and give concerts and recitals including at the Alte Oper, Frankfurt.