General and Artistic Director

Alina Ratkowska

Harpsichordist, conductor, animator of culture, teacher, Professor of Musical Arts. First Prize Winner of the International Harpsichord Competition Paola Bernardi in Bologna in 2005; in 2003, together with the ensemble she manages, Esperanto, she received the 3rd prize in the International Competition Musica Antiqua ‘Van Vlaanderen’ in Bruges, Belgium. In 2020, she was awarded a Fryderyk for a double-disc album with complete harpsichord solo pieces by Johann Goldberg as well as the prestigious cultural award of the city of Gdańsk ‘Splendor Gedanensis’ for 2019. Professor of the Chopin University of Music, where she runs a harpsichord class; since 2016.

In 1999, she graduated with honours from the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw (now Chopin University of Music) in the class of Leszek Kędracki. In 2002, she graduated from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Andrea Marcon’s class. She also studied with Jörg Andreas Bötticher, Jesper B. Christensen (Generalbass), and Johann Sonnleitner (historical piano/chamber music). In 2020, she graduated in symphony and opera conducting in the class of Marcin Nałęcz-Niesiołowski at the Academy of Music in Gdańsk; she also graduated from postgraduate studies at the Gdańsk University of Technology at the Faculty of Management and Economics.

In 2009 and 2013, she was honoured with the Sztorm Roku [Storm of the Year] award by readers of Gazeta Wyborcza. In 2008, she received the award of the Mayor of the City of Gdańsk for Young Creators of Culture. She was a scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and Art, the Marshal of the Pomeranian Voivodeship, the Culture Foundation, and many other foreign foundations. She has cooperated with the Goldberg Baroque Ensemble specializing in the performance of music preserved in the collections of the Gdańsk Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences, documenting it in the Muzyczne dziedzictwo Miasta Gdańska [Musical Heritage of the City of Gdańsk] series (DUX, Sarton). Much of her activity is devoted to the performance of contemporary harpsichord music. She has taken part 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, or Leszek Możdżer. Her activity in the field of contemporary music has resulted in, among others, the album Le Clavecin Moderne, nominated for Fryderyk 2017. In 2019, she conducted the premiere of Zygmunt Krauze’s cantata Francesco.

In 2010, her debut solo album with Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations (Sarton) was released, which received two Fryderyk nominations in 2011. In 2012, a CD with three harpsichord concertos by Johann Jeremias du Grain, a Gdańsk composer and organist who died in 1756, was released, and a year later a book devoted to them was published by the Chopin University of Music. In 2018, the artist recorded Johann Gottlieb Goldberg’s harpsichord concertos for the Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm label. The album received four nominations for the prestigious Opus Klassik 2019 award. Ratkowska is the author of the book Śladami Goldberga [Following the Footsteps of Goldberg], the first monograph devoted to the Gdańsk harpsichordist and composer.

In 2006, on her initiative, the Goldberg Festival in Gdańsk was established, which became one of the most important festivals of early music in Poland. Since September 2022 Alina Ratkowska is the director of the Wojciech Kilar Polish Philharmonic ‘Sinfonia Baltica’ in Słupsk.