At only seventeen, she won the Geneva international piano competition. Since then, she has performed widely and made a considerable number of recordings.
Maria Tipo's first appearance in North America in the late 1950s, where she played over 300 concerts, caused her to be nicknamed the "Neapolitan Horowitz". Her first recording, an LP of 12 Scarlatti sonatas, which she recorded in a mere 4 hours in 1955, was hailed by Newsweek magazine as the most spectacular record of the year.
She is a pianist of considerable strength and virtuosity. The critic Piero Rattalino recalls her playing as a teenager: "Her agility was incredible, and her precision greater than the volcanic Martha Argerich". He classes her with the "tradition of Italian interpreters that begins with Toscanini and includes Zecchi, Benedetti Michelangeli, Pollini, Accardo, Muti, Abbado: interpreters who remain masters of their emotions and achieve the effect they want on the public." He concludes: "Maria Tipo is a knight errant, always ready to do battle for her ideal, even when this ideal takes the form of the Devil. [Her] ideal is beauty. There are other ways to make music, but this is certainly not the least of them."[3]