Born in Venice in 1967, De Maria started studying the piano with Giorgio Vianello and graduated under Gino Gorini at the Conservatory of his hometown. Later he furthered his studies with Maria Tipo at the Conservatory in Geneva, where in 1988 he obtained the Premier Prix de Virtuosité, with honors.

His repertory ranges from Bach to Ligeti and he was the first Italian pianist to play Chopin's complete works in six public concerts. Recently he concentrated on Bach's works, presenting the two books pf The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Goldberg Variations.

For DECCA he recorded Chopin's complete works, The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Goldberg Variations, received with enthusiastic accolades from specialist publications including Diapason, International Piano, MusicWeb-International and Pianiste. Pietro De Maria is a member of the Santa Cecilia Academy and a teacher at Salzburg's Mozarteum, at the Fiesole School of Music and at the Pinerolo Music Academy.

After winning the Critics' Prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1990, Pietro De Maria also won other international prizes including the Dino Ciani - Teatro alla Scala in Milan (1990) and the Géza Anda in Zurich (1994) competitions. In 1997 he was the recipient of the Mendelssohn Award in Hamburg.

As a concert pianist he has been playing as soloist with some of the most prestigious orchestras and with conductors such as Roberto Abbado, Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli, Gary Bertini, Myung-Whun Chung, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Daniele Gatti, Alan Gilbert, Eliahu Inbal, Marek Janowski, Ton Koopman, Michele Mariotti, Ingo Metzmacher, Gianandrea Noseda, Corrado Rovaris, Yutaka Sado, Sándor Végh, Jonathan Webb.