Ilona Prunyi was born on 1 May 1941 in Debrecen. She began playing the piano at the age of 6. Between 1958 and 1963, she attended the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest. Her teachers were József Gát and András Mihály. While still a student of the Academy, she participated in the International Liszt-Bartók Competition in 1961, and was awarded a diploma of merit.
In 1964, she graduated as a pianist and began teaching at the Academy of Music, where now she is a senior lecturer.
Due to an illness, she was not able to start performing until ten years later, in 1974, when she delivered her first concert. Since then, she has been regularly performing, both as a solo player and at orchestra concerts in Budapest and other Hungarian towns.
Besides European countries (eg England, Germany, Austria, France, Czechoslovakia, Romania) she has also given concerts in Canada and China.
She frequently performs as a chamber musician. During the last years, she has often played the works of contemporary Hungarian composers.
The Hungarian Radio and Television often hire her as a pianist.
As a grant-holding guest, she has participated in several of Yvonne Lefebure’s piano courses in Paris.
Since 1988, she has been working on a regular basis for the Hong-Kong based HNH International Limited, in most cases as the first performer of unknown works.
She gives several recitals every year in Budapest and in the country. Having a broad repertoire, she plays not only wiener classics and romantic works but French and Russian music of the beginning of the 20th century. In the last years she also performs the works of Hungarian contemporary composers.( Emil Petrovics, József Sári, István Láng, Máté Hollós)
She collected her best solo program from 150 years old unknown piano pieces of the Hungarian romanticism of the 19th century from the age of Liszt. (Ábrányi, Bertha, Beliczay, Mosonyi, Goldmark, Volkmann, Sipos, Gaál, etc…)
Her permanent partners being Zoltán Kocsis, Jenő Jandó, Miklós Perényi, Dénes Gulyás, László Polgár, Csaba Onczay, Etelka Csavlek, Tátrai Qvartet, New Budapest Quartet, András Kiss, Eszter Perényi, Anatolij Fokanov.