Michel studied with Ingetraud Drescher, Nikolaus Delius, and
Frans Brüggen. He is lecturer for the recorder at the Staatliche Hochschule
Münster and at the Musikakademie
Kassel. In addition to compositions published under his own name, he has written numerous pieces in the style of the early 18th century under the pseudonym Giovanni Paolo Simonetti. In 1993 he succeeded in convincing noted Haydn scholar
H. C. Robbins Landon and the pianist/scholars
Paul and
Eva Badura-Skoda that six
pianosonatas he had composed were long-lost works by
Joseph Haydn.[1]
Based on the opening few bars of six lost Haydn works, found in an old thematic index, these sonatas were published in 1995 as works by Haydn, "supplemented and edited by Winfried Michel." He has similarly completed the
Viola Sonata left as a two-movement fragment by
Mikhail Glinka with a menuet as third movement, even though Glinka would have—according to his autobiography[citation needed]—put a rondo.