Winfried Rademacher studied with Josef Suk in Vienna and Sandor Vegh in Salzburg as well as participating regularly in masterclasses given by Nathan Milstein in Zuerich and by members of the Amadeus quartet in Cologne. After achieving numerous awards from among others the "Deutschen Musikwettbewerb" and the BBC in London, he embarked upon a multi-faceted musical career.

He has held the position of leader with renowned orchestras and conductors such as NDR Hamburg and Guenter Wand, Muenich Philharmonic and S. Celibidache, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Claudio Abaddo, and SWR Stuttgart under Sir Roger Norrington. At the time of writing, he plays as guest leader with the Tonhalle orchestra Zuerich.

In 1998, Norrington invited him to the Camerata Salzburg as a guest leader. There he was entrusted with directing the orchestra in many performances which brought him into contact with soloists such as Joshua Bell, Murray Perahia and Augustin Dumay. Since 2001 he has been working as leader of the renowned Zurich Chamber Orchestra with which he has made critically acclaimed solo appearances with musicians such as Heinz Holliger and Dimitri Sitkovetsky.

He is an established and much sought-after chamber musician stretching back to his days as leader of the Cherubini Quartet. He has made repeated appearances at several renowned chamber music festivals (Berliner Festwochen,Lockenhaus, Schleswig Holstein, Gstaad, Musicades Lyon, Shanghai Festival, Kuhmo) as violinist in the Linos Ensemble, the Freiburg String Sextet as well as partnering musicians such as Sabine Meyer, Edward Brunner, Radu Lupu, David Geringas, Oleg Kogan, V. Mendelssohn and Bruno Giurrana. Steven Isserlis has repeatedly invited him to take part in the open chamber music weeks at Prussia Cove in England and since 2004 he has been playing with the Razumovsky Ensemble, London with whom he recently made an acclaimed Wigmore Hall debut.

He welcomes the opportunity to perform crossover music and has worked closely with the gypsy violinist Roby Lakatos as well as playing the violin solos in numerous Charlie Chaplin films and participating in the production of a Tango CD.

Acclaimed composers such as Isang Yun, Jean Francaix, and Wolfgang Rihm have composed pieces for his ensembles which feature on numerous award winning CDs (for the labels capriccio, EMI, Naxos, ambitus, and CPO) and TV and radio documentaries. Capriccio recently released his Version of the Berg Violin Concerto, and the Max Reger Violin Concerto is following soon.

In 1986 he became a professor of violin at the Luebeck Musikhochschule before taking up the position of Head of Strings at the Musikhochschule in Trossingen in 1993. He has been a lecturer at the Razumovsky Academy in London since 2006 and also gives numerous masterclasses at home and abroad.

Winfried Rademacher plays a Nicolo Gagliano violin from 1733.