Born in Vienna, she trained as professional violinist and had already begun an orchestral career when in the early 1990s, she became attracted to the glass harmonica. This was to have a determining impact on her further professional life and led to the founding of the Vienna Glass Armonica Duo, together with her husband Gerald, also a violinist. Together they greatly contributed to the rediscovery and revival of an instrument which, after enjoying a sensational wave of popularity in the eighteenth century, soon became forgotten and neglected.
Today Christa Schönfeldinger is one of the world’s leading performers on the glass harmonica. Her repertoire ranges from the canon of works written for that instrument (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Karl Leopold Röllig, and Johann Abraham Peter Schulz) to orchestral and operatic works (Gaetano Donizetti, Camille Saint-Saëns, Richard Strauss) as well as numerous arrangements (of compositions by Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Edvard Grieg, Erik Satie, and Ennio Morricone) and contemporary music (Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass, Jörg Widmann). Christa Schönfeldinger has performed with orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, Dresden Philharmonic, NDR and SWR orchestras, New Tokio Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra Washington, under conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Kent Nagano, Christian Thielemann, Christoph Eschenbach, Franz Welser-Möst, Fabio Luisi, Sylvain Camberling, Kirill Petrenko, and John Axelrod. As a soloist and with the Vienna Glass Armonica Duo she has given concerts all over Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan. She has succeeded in restoring historical playing techniques on the glass harmonica, bringing them to a high level of perfection and expanding the scope of performance by adding new techniques and contemporary musical aesthetics.