The pianist Cordelia Höfer, born in Munich, completed her piano studies at the universities in Salzburg (with Hans Leygraf) and Munich (with Klaus Schilde). In Salzburg, she also studied conducting with Gerhard Wimberger.
Other important teachers included Tatjana Nikolajewa, Elisabeth Leonskaja, and Vitalij Magulis.

In the summer of 1980, she was invited to the renowned Beethoven interpretation course with Wilhelm Kempff in Positano, where she received decisive artistic inspiration. Kempff invited her to stay longer, and she spent joyful summer days within his circle of friends, which included Franco Zeffirelli and Carlos Kleiber.

While still a student, she was appointed to a teaching position at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. After completing her habilitation in 2002, she led a piano class there until her retirement. During her many years of teaching at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, she worked closely with colleagues such as Sándor Végh, Heinrich Schiff, and Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

Cordelia Höfer has maintained an extensive concert career since the age of 15 as both a soloist and chamber musician, performing across many European countries, in the United States, Chile, Japan, South Korea, and in 2018 at the “Shanghai Piano Festival” in China. Her list of chamber music partners is very long and includes artists such as Ruggiero Ricci, Ivry Gitlis, Heinrich Schiff, Thomas Riebl, Rainer Honeck, Alois Brandhofer, Albena Danailova, Aurora Ginastera, and Noah Bendix-Balgley, to name just a few.

Together with her children Saskia and Leonhard Roczek, she occasionally forms a piano trio and, for example, toured Japan on an extended concert tour several years ago.

Since 1991, she has performed frequently—often several times a year—in the chamber concerts of the Berlin Philharmonic with members of the orchestra. She has also performed with singers such as Christine Schäfer, Juliane Banse, and Anna Prohaska.