Alina Ratkowska

Alina Ratkowska — harpsichordist, conductor and arts manager

Alina Ratkowska won First Prize at the Paola Bernardi International Harpsichord Competition in Bologna in 2005. In 2003, she was also awarded Third Prize at the International Early Music Competition of Flanders in Bruges, Belgium, together with the Esperanto ensemble, which she directed.

She received the Polish Phonographic Academy’s 2024 Fryderyk Award in the category Contemporary Music Album of the Year for the two-disc album Le Clavecin Moderne plus Saxophone, featuring the latest music for harpsichord and saxophone, recorded as a duo with Paweł Gusnar. She also received the 2020 Fryderyk Award in the category Early Music Album of the Year for her two-disc recording of the complete solo harpsichord works of Johann Goldberg, as well as the prestigious Splendor Gedanensis Cultural Award of the City of Gdańsk for 2019. She is a professor at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, where she teaches harpsichord.

In 1999, she graduated with distinction from the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, where she studied harpsichord under Professor Leszek Kędracki. In 2002, she received a diploma from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, the University of Early Music in Basel, where she studied with Professor Andrea Marcon. In 2020, she also completed a degree in symphonic and operatic conducting under Professor Marcin Nałęcz-Niesiołowski at the Academy of Music in Gdańsk. She is additionally a graduate of postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Management and Economics of Gdańsk University of Technology.

In 2009 and 2013, she received the Sztorm Roku award, presented on the basis of votes cast by readers of Gazeta Wyborcza. In 2008, she was honoured with the Mayor of Gdańsk Award for Young Artists. She has received scholarships from the Polish Minister of Culture and Art, the Marshal of the Pomeranian Voivodeship, the Culture Foundation and numerous international foundations.

She has collaborated with the Goldberg Baroque Ensemble, which specialises in performing music preserved in the collections of the Gdańsk Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences. This repertoire has been documented in the recording series The Musical Heritage of the City of Gdańsk, released by DUX, Sarton and MDG.

A significant part of her artistic activity is devoted to contemporary music written for the harpsichord. She has participated in world premieres of chamber and solo works by Krzysztof Baculewski, Anna Ignatowicz-Glińska, Paweł Łukaszewski, Edward Sielicki, Tadeusz Dixa, Bartosz Kowalski, Marcin Łukaszewski, Dariusz Przybylski, Mikołaj Hertel and Leszek Możdżer. Her work in contemporary music has resulted in such recordings as Le Clavecin Moderne and Le Clavecin Moderne plus Percussion, nominated for the Fryderyk Awards in 2017 and 2022 respectively. In 2019, Alina Ratkowska conducted the world premiere of Zygmunt Krauze’s cantata Francesco.

In 2012, she released an album featuring three harpsichord concertos by Johann Jeremias du Grain, a Gdańsk-based composer and organist who died in 1756. A year later, the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw published her book devoted to these works. In 2018, she recorded Johann Gottlieb Goldberg’s harpsichord concertos for the German label MDG Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm. The album received four nominations for the prestigious German Opus Klassik Award in 2019.

Ratkowska is also the author of Śladami Goldberga (In Goldberg’s Footsteps), the first monograph devoted to the Gdańsk harpsichordist and composer. For this publication, she received the Splendor Gedanensis Cultural Award of the City of Gdańsk in 2020.

In 2006, on her initiative, the Goldberg Festival was established in Gdańsk. It has since become one of the most important early music festivals in Poland.

Since September 2022, she has served as General and Artistic Director of the Witold Kilar Polish Sinfonia Baltica Philharmonic in Słupsk.