Biography

Alina Pogostkina was born in Saint Petersburg and received her first violin lessons from her father. She moved to Germany in 1992 and studied under Antje Weithaas at Berlin’s Hanns Eisler Academy of Music. Ms. Pogostkina was the youngest competitor and won the Louis Spohr Competition in Freiburg in 1997, and went on to win the Prix de l’espoire of the Presidents of the European Council (1999), and prizes at the Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels (2001), the International Violin Competition in Indianapolis (2002), and the Sibelius Competition in 2005. She makes her San Francisco Symphony debut at these performances.

Alina Pogostkina has performed as a soloist with the Stuttgart, Frankfurt, and Finnish radio symphony orchestras, and with the Oslo Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm, Hallé, and Czech Philharmonic orchestras. She has also appeared with the Residentie Orkest, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and Indianapolis and Cincinnati symphony orchestras. She has collaborated with conductors including Mikhail Pletney and Roger Norrington, and played chamber music with Yuri Bashmet, Gidon Kremer, Menahem Pressler, Christoph Eschenbach, and Joshua Bell. She has performed at the Schwetzingen, Aspen, Salzburg, and Dresden music festivals.

Last season, Alina Pogostkina appeared with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestra of the Estonian Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Bamberg Symphony Orchestra. Highlights of the 2012-13 season include performances with the Orchestre National de France, Gulbenkian Orchestra of Lisbon, Warsaw Philharmonic, and North German Radio Symphony Orchestra. Next April, she is going to premiere a new violin concerto by Walter Steffens with Martyn Brabbins and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Ms. Pogostkina’s recording of Peteris Vasks’s works for violin was released in April.

Sep 2012