Volker Banfield is a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 pianist

Pianist

A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...

.

He studied at the Nordwestdeutsche Musikakademie in Detmold

Detmold

Detmold is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, with a population of about 74,000. It was the capital of the small Principality of Lippe from 1468 until 1918 and then of the Free State of Lippe until 1947...

, beginning at age 14. Afterward he moved to the United States and studied at the Juilliard School

Juilliard School

The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...

 (with Adele Marcus

Adele Marcus

Adele Marcus was an American pianist, but better known as a teacher of many other famous pianists.She was born in Kansas City, the last of 13 children of a rabbi of Russian descent...

) and at the University of Texas (with Leonard Shure

Leonard Shure

Leonard Shure was an American concert pianist, and heir to the tradition of the great Artur Schnabel, began his career as a performer at the age of 5 and as a teenager studied privately with Schnabel in Germany.-Life:Shure graduated from the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin in 1927, at which time he...

). He then returned to live in Germany and toured extensively. His repertory emphasized late 19th century

Romantic music

Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....

 and 20th century music

20th century music

20th century music is defined by the sudden emergence of advanced technology for recording and distributing music as well as dramatic innovations in musical forms and styles...

 featuring works by Bartók, Debussy, Messiaen, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, and Scriabin. The contemporary composers György Ligeti

György Ligeti

György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...

 and Detlev Müller-Siemens have dedicated works to him. He has also become identified with the works of Schumann

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

. He held a professorship at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg

Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg

The Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg is one of the larger universities of music in Germany.It was founded 1950 as Staatliche Hochschule für Musik on the base of the former private acting school of Annemarie Marks-Rocke and Eduard Marks.Studies include various music types from church music...

 until 2009.

He recorded four CDs for Wergo

WERGO

WERGO is a German record label focusing on contemporary classical music. It was founded in 1962 by the art historian Werner Goldschmidt and the musicologist Helmut Kirchmayer and is currently based in Mainz, Germany....

, and additional albums for CPO

Classic Produktion Osnabrück

Classic Produktion Osnabrück is a record label founded in 1986 by Georg Ortmann and several others. Its declared mission is to fill niches in the recorded classical repertory, with an emphasis on romantic, late romantic and 20th-century music...

, including a performance of Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...

's Piano Concerto

Piano Concerto (Busoni)

The Piano Concerto in C major, Op. 39 , by Ferruccio Busoni, is one of the largest works ever written in this particular genre. The concerto is in five movements, the last of which also utilizes a male chorus singing words from the final scene of the verse drama Aladdin by Adam Oehlenschläger.The...

 together with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, in German Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks is the internationally renowned orchestra of the Bayerischer Rundfunk , based in Munich, Germany. It is one of the three principal orchestras in the city of Munich, along with the Munich Philharmonic...

 which was awarded a Diapason d'Or

Diapason d'Or

The Diapason d'Or is a recommendation of outstanding classical music recordings given by reviewers of Diapason magazine in France, broadly equivalent to "Editor's Choice", "Disc of the Month" in the British Gramophone magazine....

, and the world-premiere recording of Hans Pfitzner

Hans Pfitzner

Hans Erich Pfitzner was a German composer and self-described anti-modernist. His best known work is the post-Romantic opera Palestrina, loosely based on the life of the great sixteenth-century composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.-Biography:Pfitzner was born in Moscow, Russia, where his...

's Piano Concerto.