The work was commissioned by the Basel chamber orchestra for their tour to Sao Paolo. the premiere was at Stadtcasino Basel on the 27th of September

It is dedicated to Joao Gilberto.

The movements are:

1. BIG MAMA

2. BATALHA des SINOS (Battle of Bells)

Currently there is no recording yet. the here attached score is the composers own edition and not intended for performance.

Klarinettenquintett

5 Schildbürgerschtraiche

1. Dr chrummi Bei – Walzer

2. Echo – Echo

3. E chliini Dudeley (Ländlerli)

4. Verruggts Rugguuserli (Jodel)

5. Hinterwäldler Chehruus

Klarinette,

Violine 1 und 2

Viola

Cello oder Kontrabass (lieber Kontrabass falls möglich)

Nach Fremdländler, Granithörner und Chill’t horn sind die nun neu entstehenden fünf Schildbürgerschtraiche ein weiteres Werk von Helena Winkelman das spielerisch Elemente der Schweizer Volksmusik verwendet.

Der eröffnende Walzer dieser Suite ist eine liebenswürdige Parade berglerischer Antihelden. Einer hat krumme Beine, weil er an dem Tag schon nach Wallisellen gelaufen ist, ein anderer ist schon am frühen Abend etwas beschwipst, der dritte ist schlichtweg nicht besonders musikalisch – dafür ein umso enthusiastischerer Tänzer.

Der zweite Schtraich, Echo – Echo erzählt die Geschichte wie die Leute Seldwylas die Kirchenglocke im nahen See versenkten weil der Krieg drohte.

Ein Zeichen am Bootsrand soll sie erinnern, wo sie die Glocke über Bord warfen – damit sie sie später wieder rausheben könnten. Doch sie fanden sie nie mehr…

E chliini Dudeley ist ein fröhliches Ländlerintermezzo, das auf allerlei harmonische Abwege gerät und sich in seinen verschiedenen Stimmen immer wieder anders und überraschend schichtet. Ein wenig schwindelerregend ist sie deshalb schon auch, die Dudeley.

Der vierte Schtraich, ein Rugguuserli ist ein Naturjodel aus dem Kanton Innerrhoden. Die Geschichte erzählt hier wie die Dorfbewohner den ehrwürdigen alten Baum auf dem Dorfplatz ausreissen, weil sie denken, dass Gold darunter sein könnte.

Der Chehruus oder Kehraus ist traditionell der letzte Tanz am Abend vor dem die jungen Männer versuchen möglichst in der Nähe ihrer Angebeteten zu sein – denn diejenige, mit der man den letzten Tanz tanzt, begleitet man auch nach Hause.

In alten Walliser Geschichten kommentieren die Erzähler das wilde Treiben oft mit: es wurde nicht nur den Wänden entlang getanzt…

Dies tut auch die Musik nicht in diesem letzten Stück.

Das Stück ist Sacha Rattle gewidmet und wurde von ihm mit vier wunderbaren Kollegen 2023 in Kreisau uraufgeführt.

Clarinet Quintet
Five Schildbürger Pranks

1. The Waltz of crooked Legs
2. Echo – Echo
3. A Little Dudeley (Ländler)
4. Crazy Rugguuserli (Yodel)
5. Backwoods (Hinterländler) Kehraus

Instrumentation
Clarinet
Violin I and II
Viola
Cello or Double Bass (preferably double bass if possible)

Following Fremdländler, Granithörner and Chill’t Horn, Five Stories of the people of Seldwyla also called Schildbürger are another work by Helena Winkelman that playfully incorporates elements of Swiss folk music.

The opening waltz of this suite is an affectionate parade of Alpine anti-heroes. One of them has crooked legs because he has already walked all the way to Wallisellen that day; another is already slightly tipsy early in the evening; a third is simply not particularly musical, yet all the more enthusiastic as a dancer.

The second prank, Echo – Echo, if full of melancholy. Because war was looming the good people of Seldwyla –tried to hide the bell of the church in the local lake. They indicated where they dropped it by making a mark on the side of the ship where they dropped it. They never found it back…

A Little Dudeley is a cheerful Ländler intermezzo that repeatedly wanders onto all kinds of harmonic byways and continually re-layers its voices in new and surprising ways. A little dizzying, therefore, this Dudeley certainly is.

The fourth prank, a verruggts Rugguuserli, is a crazy yodel from the canton of Innerrhoden. Here our not-so –brilliant village people pull out the magnificent tree in the main square to see if there is gold under it.

The Chehruus or Kehraus is traditionally the final dance of the evening, during which the young men try to position themselves as close as possible to their beloved — for the lady with whom he dances the last dance is also the lady he accompanies home.
In old Valais stories, the narrators often comment on the lively goings-on with the remark: people were not only dancing along the walls…
Nor does the music restrict itself to that in this final piece.

The work is dedicated to Sacha Rattle and he premiered it at the Kreisau Festival 2023.

Ein liebenswerter Antiheld steht im Mittelpunkt der Komposition der Schweizer Komponistin Helena Winkelman. „Der arme Spielmann“ – Titelfigur einer 1848 von Franz Grillparzer verfassten Novelle, einer der wenigen Prosatexte des Österreichers. Einerseits ist diese Novelle eine Art Psychogramm eines sehr idealistischen, aber lebensunpraktischen Menschen, andererseits eine Beschreibung der Wiener Gesellschaft zu Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Helena Winkelman fasziniert an diesem Text die Art und Weise, wie Grillparzer über Musik schreibt und sie hegt große Sympathien für die so rührende Figur des geigenden Spielmanns, der leider unfähig ist zu erkennen, was in Situationen wichtig ist und was nicht.

Sie hat auf Basis von Grillparzers Novelle ein Stück für Figurentheater und Kammermusikensemble in der Beethoven-Septett-Besetzung geschrieben.  Es ist ein Werk das fließende Übergänge zwischen Altem und Neuem schafft. Für ihre Vertonung hat sich die Komponistin tief in Wiener Archive vergraben und einige Kostbarkeiten ans Licht befördert, die das Wien des 19. Jahrhunderts wieder aufleben lassen: alte Wiener Lieder und Tänze, die den manchmal durchaus morbiden Geist dieser Zeit einfangen. Eingebettet in diese nostalgische Szenerie bekommen die vier Hauptpersonen aus Grillparzers Novelle bei Winkelman ihre eigene unverwechselbare Stimme. Die Bratsche verkörpert den Spielmann, das Horn seinen Vater, einen Hofrat. Ein Hauptstrang der Novelle erzählt die (unglückliche) Liebesgeschichte des Spielmanns zu einem Mädchen namens Barbara, die von der Klarinette dargestellt wird. Der Kontrabass schließlich porträtiert den Vater von Barbara, einen am Profit orientierten Krämer, der sich für seine Tochter wahrlich etwas Besseres wünscht als einen mittellosen Träumer.

Das Stück beginnt mit der Ouvertüre (Das Volksfest), hier ist man sofort im Geschehen – mitten in Wien tobt das Leben.

„Der arme Spielmann“ ist die erste Auftragskomposition des franz ensembles. Im März 2023 feierte die Version mit Figurentheater Uraufführung.

These eight short movements for Soprano and small ensemble are a collaboration with Judit Kurtag. Judit made many animal drawings when her grandmother Marta was very ill to brighten her heart.

They are so alive that Winkelman felt, music could come from them. So she asked Judit to make three versions (with implied movement inbetween) for her, to then write pieces for them.

Winkelman also invented the names:

1. Chienchaud (Hotdoggie)
2. Crococow
3. Cat-a-stroph-ick
4. Chüelimüeli
5. Cheval-resk
6. Meerkat – Kat. I NUTS!
7. Tired-tapir
8. Shockedysheep

1. The big tease 
2. Rain dance

III. Of thunder an lightning

IV Apparition (Evensong)

V Leveling up

VI Rite

Die Hauptprotagonisten des sechssätzigen Werkes sind Goblins  (auf Koreanisch Dokkaebi). Es sind Naturgeister/götter die es in vielen Kulturen gibt und die heutzutage fast nur noch als Gegner in Computerspielen anzutreffen sind.

Dieses Aufeinandertreffen von Natur und Technik verlangte nach einem entsprechenden Instrumentarium. Auf der einen Seite sind da Holz und Fellinstrumente als Vertreter der Natur, auf der anderen Seite gibt es die von der Firma Lunason neu entwickelten Metallinstrumente- darunter  Kawaphone und Nicophone  – mit ihrem manchmal fast elektronisch anmutenden Klangbild.

Schon im ersten der sechs Stücke «The big tease» wird klar, warum es zum Grundkonzept des Werkes gehört, die Schlagzeuger kreisförmig um das Publikum herum aufzustellen:  Die Goblins nähern sich von allen Seiten und umzingeln die Hörer.

Der zweite Teil, ein Regentanz ist sehr rituell – ein Element das auch im letzten Satz «Rite» wiederkehrt. Der durchgehende Grundschlag auf der Gran Cassa beschwört den Regen herbei, der sich dann mit dem orchestrierten Gewitter im dritten Satz auch einstellt.

In diesem Teil «of thunder and lightning» kommen die sechs Pauken zum Einsatz – und vom fernen Grollen eines Wetterleuchtens bis zum Einschlag in nächster Nähe spielt das Wetter mit aller Kraft.

Apparition (Erscheinung), der vierte Satz, porträtiert die Ruhe nach dem Sturm und die klare Luft nach dem grossen Gewitter – hier hört man die ebenfalls von Lunason entwickelten glockenartigen Gaiabells.

Der fünfte Satz «leveling up» nimmt nochmals humorvoll Bezug auf Computerspiele: man hört die steigende Schwierigkeit der Levels bis zum Endgegner.  «Rite», das Finale, führt mit seinen vielen Taktwechseln und gemeinsamen Einsätzen nochmals die ganze Kraft und Virtuosität der Perkussionisten ins Feld.

Seit ihrer Arbeit mit dem Asian Art Ensemble in Berlin 2012 ist Winkelman die koreanische Musik bekannt – und in Goblins folgte sie ihrer Faszination dafür. Dass sie während ihrer Recherchen zufällig auf das koreanische Drama Dokkaebi (Goblin) stiess hatte zur Folge, dass sie das Werk dem Schauspieler der Hauptrolle Gong Ji-Cheol widmete.

Helena Winkelman: 12 Micro – Bagatelles or 12 Visitations from the past.

This work was commissioned by the trio Gaspard and its premiere took place at the Kammermusikfest Lockenhaus in 2020.

My intention was, to create short pieces that resemble bagatelles of which each single one opens a window to one of the great composers of the past. Having these great musical minds visit us in form of new pieces gave the work its subtitle: Visitations.

The cycle of 12 was determined by a concept to use the 12 zodiac signs to choose the composers – for each sign only one that was born in that respective month.

Each movement can be played separately – as the performing piano trio seems it suitable for the program.

The cycle is being opened by a quotation of Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit as a little homage to the Trio Gaspard who commissioned it.

The compositions are fare more than just exercises in different styles or paraphrases. There are genuine attempts to connect with the composer’s essence – crossing the abyss of time.

At the moment the work is still unfinished (Poulenc and Liszt are missing) – Winkelman is adding movement by movement in each new performance of the piece. Here in Prussia Cove Beethoven was added – and it makes this a small world – premiere.

1. Visitation of Maurice Ravel
2. Visitation of Joseph Haydn
3. Visitation of Johannes Brahms
4. Visitation of Robert Schumann
5. Visitation of Gustav Mahler
6. Visitation of Claude Debussy
7. Visitation of Dmitri Shostakovich
8. Visitation of Henry Purcell
9. Visitation of Felix Mendelssohn – Bartholdy
10. Visitation of Ludwig van Beethoven

VIS A VIS GOYA

Seven reflections on seven drawings by Goya.

written in 2019 for the series of Beethoven Sonatas of the Duo with Francesco Dillo, Cello and Emanuele Torquati, piano.

These musical miniatures set out to capture the strong atmospheres of the drawings of Francisco de Goya, a contemporary of Beethoven and a figure of similar revolutionary importance in his field.

Both had to negotiate in their art the napoleonic wars and both became deaf later in life.

Goya quite abruptly with 46 years, and Beethoven in a slower decline. But the latter started his conversation books – because he could not hear his friends anymore – around the same age.

Because of this, silence is of great importance in these new pieces wherein the idealistic meets the grotesque on every step. This juxtaposition –at first sight -might point out the biggest difference between the two artists, Beethoven with his claim that all humans shall become brothers, and Goya with his often shockingly grotesque portrayals of human subjects.

But during the composing process two questions will become of fundamental importance: How idealistic needed Goya to be, to portray human suffering  so strikingly? And where actually is Beethoven grotesque and we  can not recognize it anymore because of the musical language of his time, which,  compared to our contemporary idioms, seems so consonant and well – organized?

The titles of the drawings are:

Songe

Double portrait equestre

Figure géante à un balcon

Étudiant/grenouille

Les scieurs de long

Groupe des têtes caricaturales

Panthère

Commissioned by the Stiftung Kartause Ittingen and premiered by Nicolas Altstaedt, this was Winkelman’s first visit to the realm of ancient greek myths.  It is dedicated to Nicolas Altstaedt.

I  PROLOGUE AND PASSACAGLIA – Atlas and Herakles

III PERPETUUM MOBILE – the dragon ladon

There are eight short duos for violin and accordion based on a selection of angels by Paul Klee.

They were  written in 2018 at the request of the accordionist Viviane Chassot for a duo recital held in connection with a Klee exhibition at The Phillips Collection in Washington.

Each angel is dedicated to a friend, either because they themselves are like one, or because at that time they needed one in order to recover their health.

The friends themselves chose the angel they liked best, and the composer then attempted to recreate as faithfully as possible in music the character, gesture, and color of the angel paintings. Ideally, the images of the angels are projected onto the wall behind the performers.

After the premiere, the work was performed once more in Paris at the festival Le Printemps du Violon.

Commission of the International Bach Society Schaffhausen

This is Winkelman’s second string quartet and was written for the Schumann-quartet’s residency in Castle Esterhazy, Eisenstadt.

It is a kind of very free paraphrase on Haydn’s Opr 33 no 3 quartet. (The bird)

It consists of eight short movements.

In this music theatre of a duration of approximately 90 minutes, the controversial Bernese artist Adolf Wölfli is brought back to life in all the complexity of his schizophrenic personality.

The music is scored for the Swiss avantcore rockband – trio Steamboat Switzerland (extended by two instruments)

With few exceptions, the libretto draws on Wölfli’s well-known two-volume work Von der Wiege bis zur Bahre, which also contains his autobiographical writings.

Alongside Wölfli’s astonishing and obsessive artistic output in text and image (his drawings simultaneously serve as stage design), the theme of child abuse forms a central focus of the evening: not only the sexual abuse committed by Wölfli himself, but also the widespread and socially tolerated exploitation of children from impoverished families as labourers in 19th- and early 20th-century Switzerland.

The selection of texts was made without censorship, without idealisation, and always with the aim of presenting a balanced representation of the various textual forms found in Wölfli’s writings.

Wölfli’s most important figures of reference appear throughout—sometimes as ghostly pantomimes, sometimes as sharp-witted and eloquent adversaries: his mother, her friend, the girls he pursued, an imaginary princess, and his alter egos—Doufi, the name he gives himself as a child, and St. Adolf, his exalted self.

In addition, several encounters with the Waldau psychiatrist Walter Morgenthaler have been reconstructed. Morgenthaler recognised and supported Wölfli’s talent and recounted many of his conversations with him in his book Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler, so that for the libretto they merely had to be rendered into direct speech.

Many stage directions refer to actions that Wölfli actually carried out during his time at the Psychiatrische Klinik Waldau. These are of great importance, as they counterbalance the dominance of the spoken word.

A similar function is fulfilled by the music—particularly in the interludes and in the accompaniment and rhythmic structuring of many text passages.

The marches and waltzes are closely modelled on the music left behind by Wölfli himself, while the interludes, accompaniments, and hymns are all newly composed.

The work is dedicated to Winkelman’s brother Florian Winkelman.

This piece was performed by the Münchener Kammerorchester (in a slightly shortened version in 2013) and the complete first performance was with the Musikfest Lockenhaus strings in 2014, conducted by Christoph Altstaedt. The work is inspired by Disney cartoons which I loved to watch as a kid. the score is fast and fun and deadly – and for the audience to get a bit of a grasp what is happening in the music and to inspire the cartoon in their heads, I did some rudimentary drawings of the scenes involved.

It all starts of quite idyllic scene with meercats doing their thing: digging, eating, playing, looking around. but there is a hungry feline on the prowl. the hunt starts. In the end the meercat gets (regardless of the well-intended interventions of the warning birds) caught and ascends to meerkat heaven (here the overtone series come in).

In the end the big cat also gets eaten by an eagle.

The piece is fast, fun and deadly.

It is written for a cartoon – film  orchestra like it existed in L.A. at the peak of the disney studios.

Envidia – as writer Rafael Spregelburd called the complete Evening is actually a double bill of two texts by him: Extravagancia – the story of three sisters that was adapted from a play of this name, and Satanica, an obsessive and frightening prose text that focuses on the inner machinations of an emigrant, his piano that is a heirloom, his hearing and his desperate attachments.

The provided link only leads to a compilation of an excerpt of Extravagancia:

the 3rd sister’s television program where she teaches phonetics for the masses.

This work is dedicated to chamber music professor Eberhard Feltz.

It was premiered in Basel by the Arditti quartet and later performed in Lockenhaus by the Schumann quartet.

It follows the concept of unison, bicinium, four part writing, and eight part writing (each player playing double stops continuously)

The titles of the movements are:

Kelpie – Alsvidr und Arvakr – Mandelstam, Rosenbaum – Sleipnir

They all have ado with horses – following the name of the quartet that refers to the horses on the Brandenburg Gate.

the link given only provides a recording of the last movement.

Winkelman’s first symphonic work «Vers l’ouvert» or «Towards the Open» brings together many of Winkelman’s main musical references. There is a prominent cantus melody in the first and third part oft he work – which is a testimony of her sympathy for early music. Then there is a solo for four horns – a nod to her affiliation with Swiss folk music and the alphorn. The large, agitated build-up in the first part—reminiscent of a social uprising is inspired from her engagement with jazz.

In the middle section, which is extremely reduced in terms musical motifs, one finds both an element of focused self-alienation (motivated here by her engagement with Zen Buddhism and some whimsical escapades of solo-instruments. At the center of this middle section, the entire string apparatus suddenly runs aground, with a quiet grinding of all bows, like a huge ship comes to a halt on a sandbank. A percussion instrument  called “aquaphone” breaks the spell.

The last of the three parts begins in the solo strings with a melody compressed into a microtonal sequence. Gradually, the pitch space expands, and the melody becomes recognizable within the tempered tuning system. What follows is the longest build-up of the work, with heavy interjections from woodwinds and brass and glissandi in the strings.

At its massive climax, the musical action transforms into a long, lyrical phrase, played by the woodwinds and enveloped by a soft halo of the strings. With its wide musical arc and its constantly shifting tonality, it is perhaps the most sublime moment of the work.

From this emerges once more the cantus from the first part—now no longer in the trombones but in the bassoons, oboe, and English horn.

The piece comes to an end through the steady slowing down of a two-note motif—as it also appeared in in the middle section as a repetitive ostinato in the low horns and trombones.

It is like the collapse of a giant animal.

Vers l’ouvert has a duration of 18 min and was written in the end of her composition studies in Basel. The work is conceived as the first movement of a major symphonic work. By now (2026) only the first two movements are realized. (SKAN, written for the Symphony Orchestra in St. Gallen is the second one.)

From the Ashes is dedicated to the Ensemble Phoenix Basel while Winkelman was still studying at the music academy Basel.

Each of the 8 parts is written for a particular player of this formidable new music group and its conductor Jürg Henneberger.

In Egyptian mythology, the phoenix is a sacred bird.
Some depictions show it in the form of a heron, while others portray it as a magnificent bird with shimmering plumage and the size of an eagle. It considered to be closely associated with the cult of Ra, the Egyptian sun god.

When the bird’s life draws to an end (its lifespan is said in different traditions to range between 300 and 1000 years), it builds a nest of wood and aromatic plants in a single night.

It then sits in the nest and, with its song, summons the rising sun, whose rays set the nest ablaze and burn the bird. In the ashes, however, an egg remains, from which a new phoenix soon hatches. The bird is therefore regarded as a symbol of rebirth.

Every part of the myth is musically represented with its centre piece being the sacrifiial song of the phoenix when he calls fort he sun – a duo between E flat clarinet and piccolo.

Together with Miorita it is the most direct Programmusik Winkelman wrote.

An interesting feature is the use of an Alphorn, an ARP odyssee, (analogue synth invented in 1972, two years before the birth of the composer) and a small dance scene (waltz) between trombone and horn player.

It has a cosmological dimension because at one point the pulsations of the turning of the planets around the sun was calculated to create a polymetric timpani solo – then all planets slowly adjust until there remains an isometric pulsation.

Comment oft he phoenix ensemble after the first rehearsal: «Dagegen waren Pink Floyd Waisenknaben.» (compared with this Pink Floyd were orphan boys)

I am sure they intended no insult.

But the music does have a dreamlike quality.

The first sketches were made in Dorset, England.

On Canto 33

Winkelman’s first and biggest choral work is based on the 33rd Canto of the paradise of Dante Alighieri’s divina commedia. It is a composition wherein microtonality plays a central role. The essential themes of it are Saint- Bernard’s great prayer to Mary, Dante’s vision of the great, divine light, and his vision of the circles of the Trinity.

After  the invocation of the help of Mary with a countertenor solo, Dante’s great vision begins. Repeatedly his poetic descriptions are interrupted by lament about the inadequacy of language and his futile striving for conceptual understanding—an effort that ultimately ends his vision with a stroke of lightning.

Winkelman’s work on the piece was driven by hope that music may perhaps enter regions of experience that remain inaccessible to language. Almost the entire work is based on three overtone series, the most important one being  E-flat (the harp is tuned accordingly).
To support the singers’ intonation, three monochords are used, each tuned to the respective mode and played by the women themselves.
The male singers do not use microtonality, but  expansive bass lines and speech-like chant in combination with the percussion.

Perotinus, the great master of the organum of the notre dame school is represented twice in the piece as music which Dante must have heard during his lifetime.

Canto 33 is  a musical memorial to Edwin Villiger, one of Switzerland’s finest choral conductors and Winkelman’s first teacher.

About Rota Orat Taro Ator

The date of the commission fell into a time, when I was in the middle of an intense study of Tarot Cards. Since I never used them to predict the future but rather as a mirror of my inside world, it was a very close step to actually deciding to use them to determine the dramaturgic evolution of a piece.

Why should one use aleatoric processes only for the musical observable quantities and not for the content? Like lyrics it could help the piece to find a strong inner focus.

I chose to draw 11 cards to do realize this intention. Then, faithfully I followed their symbolic meaning in writing the entire piece.

I first drew three cards to determine the three musical main subjects of the piece.

They also would undergo transformative changes during it.

They were “4 of swords” (for armistice)

the “hermit”

and the “6 of staves” (suppression).

These two cards gave me a lot of unresolved issues. Not bad to start a piece with.,

After this, I drew two cards to determine in what way I was going to transform my three first subjects. These cards were:

Prince of swords (separating from what is no longer your reality)

and “Art” (Blissful synthesis and flow)

These two cards gave me two of the quintessential tools a composer uses to work on his material.

The next two important cards I drew to characterize:

1^st: the way, the climax of the piece would be reached and

2^nd what the moments just after it would be like.

These cards were: The “Moon” (crisis and the dark night of the soul)

and “10 of chalices” (fulfillment.)

These cards were a real gift. They represented exactly what in most cases was musically most gratifying anyway.

The last three cards were to symbolize the place, where the first three would transform to:

Sword 4 (armistice) from the beginning was shown to transform into the “3 of staves” (virtue),

the “hermit” was shown to transform into the “chariot”

and the “6 of staves” (suppression) transformed itself into the “high priestess”.

This early work is highly virtuosic for both violin and piano with very complex and fast rhythmic sections but there are also some very lyrical parts to it and stays within a freely treated tonal frame.

My gratitude belongs to the Harvard Musical Society Boston for commissioning the piece.

The premiere was performed Anton Kernjak and myself.

This piece was written on a vacation in Iceland.

It features a passacaglia- bass for a while but then takes off into jazzy passages and rock music (e-guitar)  – sounds and its crazy flageolet-passages are a hommage to the icelandic fairyfolk.

Gravitations” has been written in 2002 and consists of two parts. They can be played independently but nevertheless they are very connected to each other.

As the title indicates, the music explores the different aspects of Gravitation. The first part is more about the subtle powers of the interpersonal. Attraction and withdrawal are the two poles of the gravitational currents between the two entities portrayed in it.

A deep, regular heartbeat in the bass opens the first piece and forms the foundation of a quiet, lost melody that after a while is accompanied by ghostlike leaping arches in the violin. After some time the violin takes over the melody, while the piano, with increasingly accelerating figurations, leads into the agitato middle section. A series of brutal glissandi in the violin and numerous changes of meter characterize this part. It ends, after a short violin cadenza, in a melancholic retrospective, and finally the heartbeat motif appears once again

The second part is more about the energy itself that makes bodies fall and rise, that gives every movement its life or lets it die. In the sketchbook used when creating the piece one finds: Weightless/floating…..so heavy – no chance to ever get up again…potential energy…..a stone that drops…..a feather that sinks……an object that bounces off the ground…. overcoming gravitation by velocity ….being pulled up…..the way of an arrow.

The piece is a practice in compassion with all objects subjected to this law of nature.

It is dedicated to my teacher and mentor in Basel: Hansheinz Schneeberger.

Rondo with a Janus- Head was written in 2000, before I began my composition studies.
It is dedicated to the cellist Christoph Dangel.

The rondo theme is a homage to Dave Brubeck, and thus to my compositional beginnings in New York.
This is reflected in the frequent changes of metre and in the demand for a lightness of bowing akin to that of Stéphane Grappelli.

The reason for the title “with a Janus Head” lies in the dramaturgical design, which derives its force primarily from the juxtaposition of strong contrasts.

In keeping with this concept, the middle sections (couplets) stand in stark opposition to the amiable theme:
first shadowy, then aggressive, at times playful, then again lost in an entirely different world, they place it within complex contexts and ultimately overwhelm it.