“Alina Pogostkina’s playing of the opening movement of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto was exceptional. The bravura passages in the finale were crisply played with nothing rushed or merely sketched.”
The Birmingham Post, February 2009

Winner of the 2005 Sibelius Competition, Alina Pogostkina’s recent concert tours have seen her perform at some of the world’s most renowned festivals and concert venues. Numerous radio and TV productions document her artistic career.

Alina has collaborated with conductors such as Sir Mark Elder, Mikko Franck, Sakari Oramo, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Mikhail Pletnev, Sir Roger Norrington, Gennadi Roshdestvensky, Christoph Eschenbach and Andrey Boreyko. In Germany, she performs with the SWR Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt and MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig. Elsewhere she has appeared with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Residentie Orkest, Kremerata Baltica, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra amongs many others.

Highlights of the current season include engagements with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, National Philharmonic of Russia, and a concert with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at Frankfurt’s Alte Oper. July 2010 will see her joining forces with violinists Lisa Batiashvili and Baiba Skride for a ‘Violin Summit’ at Baden-Baden Festspielhaus accompanied by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

Born in St. Petersburg, Alina Pogostkina moved to Germany in 1992, receiving her earliest violin lessons from her father. She later studied with violinist Christoph Poppen, and subsequently with Antje Weithaas at the Hochschule für Musik ‘Hanns Eisler’ in Berlin. She has won many important competitions, including the 1997 Louis Spohr Competition in Freiburg, where she was the youngest competitor. In 2001 she was among the prize-winners at the Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels and in 2002 she won the International Violin Competition in Indianapolis, USA.

Alina Pogostkina has taken part in master classes by Dorothy DeLay, Ruggiero Ricci, Dimitri Sitkovetzky and Tibor Varga. She regularly appears at internationally renowned festivals such as Schwetzinger, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Mozartfest Würzburg, Bergen, Beethovenfest Bonn, Aspen, Salzburg (where she has performed with Gidon Kremer), Dresden Musikfestspiele and Lockenhaus.

Alina Pogostkina plays a violin by Antonio Stradivari (Cremona 1709), made available by the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.