Recent Publications

Early Sound Recordings: Academic Research and Practice - 1st Edition
routledge.com

David Milsom, ‘Understanding Joseph Joachim’s Style and Practice: Recordings as a Research Tool’, in Eva Moreda Rodriguez & Inja Stanovic (eds.) Early Sound Recordings: Academic Research & Practice (Routledge, London, 2023)

Romantic Violin Performing Practices – A Handbook
Boydell, Woodbridge, 2020

This book discusses key issues (and barriers) of putting into practice nineteenth-century violin performing practices. It deals with a number of well-known problems concerning romantic performance including the widely perceived 'gap' between scholarship and the act of performance.

David Milsom (violin) & Inja Stanovic (piano), Austro-German Revivals – (Re)constructing Acoustic Recordings (Pennine Records, Huddersfield, PR02, 2022) - Pennine Records (hud.ac.uk)

David Milsom (violin), Helena Ruinard (violin), Ellis Thompson (viola), Douglas Badger (cello), Richard Casey (piano), Borealis Chamber Choir and soloists (dir. Stephen Muir), Robert Fürstenthal Der Sonnengesang des Heiligen Franz von Assisi (Toccata Classics, 2022) Robert Fürstenthal: Complete Choral Music, vol. 1 – Borealis (borealis-choir.org)

Future Projects

A short monograph on the Cesar Franck violin sonata is currently in preparation with Routledge, for probable release in 2025.

For release in the summer/autumn of 2024, is a sound recording of J. S. Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins BWV 1043 (Maria Nikolaeva and David Milsom, nineteenth-century violins, Jonathan Gooing, nineteenth-century piano). The current intended destination is Pennine Records (University of Huddersfield).

This is part of a ground-breaking project to embed ‘romantic’ performing practices (in terms of performance style as well as instruments) into the foundational learning of a gifted pre-HE learner, and it provides the student with access not only to the scholar-performer expertise David embodies, but also the chance to experience the professional recording environment, including gaining vital modern experiences with recording editing processes. More importantly and on its own merits, it is a meeting of enquiring minds and musicianship in a performance of one of the seminal works in the canon. In this specific stylistic context certainly, this is innovative - the recording itself is highly unusual for its inclusion of Joseph Hellmesberger’s cadenza in the finale. The project also includes a live performance at the University of Huddersfield on April 13, 2024, and the plan to record (as two ‘sides’) the finale (including cadenza) as a new wax disc recording (using technology as employed before the adoption of the electric microphone in 1925, with Sheffield-based and internationally-renowned sound engineer Duncan Miller of Vulcan Records - https://www.vulcanrecords.com/ - giving an international platform to the project via the Early Recordings Association - https://www.surrey.ac.uk/early-recordings-association - directed by David’s colleague Dr Inja Stanovic, and with David as a key and founder member.

The project epitomizes David’s renewed enthusiasm to seek to harness the fruits of professional scholarship and hitherto specialist Higher Education research to impact the learning and development of talented and committed students.

For the ‘live’ event, see: https://www.hud.ac.uk/performance/april/