An important part of her work is the collaboration with other composers like Sofia Gubaidulina, György Kurtag, Garth Knox, Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm, Beat Furrer, Georg Friedrich Haas, Toshio Hosokawa, Mike Svoboda and Thomas Larcher. She also - especially with the camerata variabile - played premieres by many important Swiss composers like Alfred Zimmerlin, Martin Jaggi, Rudolf Kelterborn, Edu Haubensak, Lukas Langlotz, Philip Hefti, Gérard Zinsstag, Caroline Charrière, Iris Szeghy and Roland Moser.

Besides her activites as a chamber musician, she has performed all of Mozart’s violin concertos with her own cadenzas, and for the Ernen festival she created an arrangement of Giuseppe Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata for violin and orchestra. She has also interpreted the concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven and Johann Sebastian Bach, and has given numerous recitals with a repertoire ranging from the baroque to the modern era. She also feels a great affinity with the old Viennese coffee house music, notably the works of Fritz Kreisler.

Origins and paths

Helena Winkelman was was born into a family of musicians with Swiss, Italian and Dutch roots. She grew up with baroque music: Her mother is a harpsichord player, her father a flutist and instrument builder.

Her hometown had a considerable influence on her musical beginnings because there, one of the first Swiss renaissance music ensembles was founded and she spent unforgettable moments with shawm, fidel- and hurdy-gurdy players in the garden of her parents.

Simultaneously she developed a particular fascination for Hungarian folk music. Her first Violin teacher, Edwin Villiger was using the Kodaly method for their lessons - which considers improvisation a vital part of any music education.

Therefore inventing music herself was something she considered completely normal. Villiger was one of the great pioneers of the Swiss tradition of children and youth choirs in Switzerland. Amongst Winkelman's happiest musical memories certainly belongs her time as a young singer in these choirs.

At the age of sixteen, she became a member of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester. Her encounter with the conducting of Claudio Abbado opened up the world of the romantic repertoire to her and strengthened her resolve to become a professional musician. Later, when she performed with this orchestra at the Wien Modern festival, contemporary music entered her life: Standing at the very forefront of the present moment and gazing across the abyss of time into the future—this deeply captivated her then, and that fascination has remained and finally made her into a composer.