Anna Kowalska is a Polish lutenist who studied lute with Toyohiko Satoh and Nigel North at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands. She teaches lute and 19th-century guitar at the Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz and at the Fryderyk Chopin Music College in Warsaw. Since the early 2000s she has performed as one half of Luteduo, together with lutenist Anton Birula, a project dedicated to the long-neglected repertoire for two Baroque lutes; the duo was the first to perform and record the recently rediscovered duet compositions of François Dufaut and transcriptions of Marin Marais’s viola da gamba duets for two Baroque lutes, released on the 2002 album Baroque Lute Duets.

Through Luteduo, Anna Kowalska has helped revive an almost entirely forgotten strand of the lute repertoire — original works for two lutes — while her programs with Anton Birula spanning Piccinini and Kapsberger, Sanz and Murcia, De Visée and Couperin, and a large-scale project of J.S. Bach’s solo violin and cello works transcribed for two 24-string Baroque lutes have taken this niche repertoire to concert audiences across more than a dozen European countries.

Sources:

• https://www.luteduo.com/
• https://lutesocietyofamerica.org/members/anna-kowalska/