"The most perfect harmony of all sounds is found in silence"

- A.Schopenhauer

Foto:  Pilvax & Oberyn 

"... Helena Winkelman is one of the rare talents that managed to find her own voice as a composer as well as an instrumentalist... chamber music is of great importance to her. Apart from knowing the standard repertoire she also premiered countless new works and she meets traditional swiss folk music with an open heart. As a composer she makes good use of her experience in these fields: She is respectful towards the interprets and their instruments and she is a fine craftsman. Different stilistic influences contributed to her compositoric language. With a  very subtle imagination of sound and a refined sense for musical evolutions in time she develops works that emanate warmth and feel as if they came from nature itself.  " 

Laudatio when receiving a scholarship to stay for half a year in Berlin, 2011 Schaffhausen (D)

Violinist and composer Helena Winkelman is one of the most appraised and distinct musical voices of her country of origin, Switzerland. Composing and performing are of equal importance to her.

As a charismatic violinist, she establishes a very direct connection to her audience and the promotion of fascinating new repertoire is one of her primary interest.

After winning the Pro Musicis Award in 2001 she gave her debut at Weill recital hall, New York and Salle Cortot, Paris. 2008 she spent a year in London on a scholarship by Landis & Gyr and in 2012 she received a bursary to work for half a year in Berlin.

She was composer in residence at the Lockenhaus (2014) and Ernen festivals (2013) and in 2016 she received the Georg Fisher prize of her native town Schaffhausen and in 2017 the Swiss music award.

Today her music is performed around the world and is a clever and open fusion of contemporary sounds with rock music, swiss folk music and Asian traditions. She has written for almost every musical formation from choir works to orchestra and chamber music and her music was performed by the Arditti Quartet, the Basle Chamber Orchestra, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Asian Art Ensemble, Ensemble Phoenix, Ensemble Musikfabrik and soloists like Nicolas Altstaedt, Thomas and Patrick Demenga Hansheinz Schneeberger, Pekka Kuusiisto, Patricia Kopatchinskaya, Dana Ciocarlie, Simon Höfele, Balthasar Streiff, Xenia Jancovich, Steamboat Switzerland and others. Her work "Bandes Dessinées"  was selected for the world music days in Ljubljana. Her works are published by EDITIONS BIM Switzerland.

Since 20 years she is a participant of IMS open chamber music festival in Prussia Cove and later also performed at the Bastad festival (Sweden) the Lucerne -, Gstaad - and Davos Music Festivals (Switzerland). Being a true aficionado of intimate chamber music settings, she and her mixed group, the Camerata Variabile Basel have created their own concert series that often bridges music with social or philosophical themes. She is the first violinst of the London- based Callino Quartet since 2017.

Besides her teachers Roland Moser and Georg Friedrich Haas, her major musical influences were composers György Kurtag and George Benjamin, chamber music professor Eberhard Feltz, percussionist Pierre Favre, violinist Gidon Kremer and conductor Claudio Abbado with whom she collaborated at the Lucerne Festival Orchestra from 2003 until 2008