Early Recordings Association (ERA) Conference 2025

The Early Recordings Association (ERA) is a non-profit association and an international platform for communication between researchers and early recording enthusiasts. ERA is a free source and online platform for general audiences, academic researchers, collectors, and enthusiasts interested in early recordings, currently connecting over 200 members all over the world. ERA events open pathways for researchers, practitioners and enthusiasts to collaborate, and share their knowledge, experience and skills. Early Recordings Association Annual Conference shall take place from 1 to 3 July 2025, at the University of Surrey in Guildford. Come and hear an amazing array of papers and lecture recitals, delivered by early-career researchers, postgraduate students and established experts, who currently work on early recordings in the widest range of genres and perspectives.
 

Programme committee

• Inja Stanovic (University of Surrey)
• Eva Moreda Rodriguez (University of Glasgow)
• Patrick Feaster (First Sounds Initiative)
• Nikos Ordoulidis (University of Ioannina)
• Filip Sir (National Museum Prague).

Tuesday, 1 July 2025

9:30 - 11:00   Session 1: Recording historiography

Dr. Ferenc János Szabó: Early Recordings and the Challenges of Discography in the 21st Century

Paul Kerensa: The Earliest BBC Recording: The First Monarch on Air

Trayce Arssow: Centenary of the Beginnings of Electrical Recording in Great Britain. Paul Voigt’s Technological Inventions and the Development of His Own Electrical Recording Method, 1925-1927

11:20 – 12:50   Session 2: Recording markets 

Dr. Salvatore Morra: “Musical Orient” in Italy: The Early Recordings (1930s) of the International Association for Mediterranean and Oriental Studies (ISMEO) 

Drs. George Kokkonis and Nikos Ordoulidis: Their Agent’s Voice: A Letter to HMV in the 1930s About the Greek Market

Dr. Marija Maglov: Selling Sound Carriers in Serbia/Yugoslavia in the early 20th century

14:00 - 15:00 Keynote address: Professor Mark Katz

15:10 – 16:40   Session 3: Analysis

Dr. Ana Llorens: Pau Casals’ recording of Bach’s cello suites: micro-scale shaping in the sarabandes

Dr. Luís Bastos Machado: Continuity and/or Segmentation: Strategies for Formal Articulation in Early Recordings of Johannes Brahms's Piano Music

Dr. László Stachó: The potential of complex statistical analyses in characterising performance style

17:00 - 17:45    Workshop 1: tba

Wednesday, 2 July 2025

9:30 – 10:30   Session 4: Music and rhetoric

Orestis Papaioannou: 'Speak-against-the-music': Variation and Traces of Epic Singing in Selected Historical Recordings of Die Dreigroschenoper (1928-1930).

Carlota Martínez Escamilla: Music and Rhetoric: Recorded Performances of the Prelude by Johann Sebastian Bach's Suite II for Solo Cello

10:45 – 12:45  Session 5: Performance styles

Ella Fallon: Asynchrony in Cécile Chaminade’s Recorded Performance Style

Hilary Metzger: Comparing different recordings of the same composition: the case of Victor Herbert

Greg Szwarcman: Classical and Romantic Approaches to Conducting Beethoven’s Symphonies in the late Nineteenth Century

Christos Yiallouros: Fixing Elgar; Re-editing his 1929 Piano Improvisations

14:00 – 15:30   Session 6: Lecture recitals

Dr. Marco Ramelli and Enrica Savigni: The Recording by Federico Mompou and Miguel Llobet - The Interplay of Sound and Tactile Perception in Catalan Music

Professor Neal Peres Da Costa: Waxing lyrical: Observations on recording onto wax disc

15:45 – 17:15   Workshop 2: tba

Thursday, 3 July 

9:30 – 11:30   Session 7: Belgian recordings

Dr. Fañch Thoraval: The project for a phonographic archive in Brussels: Mahillon and the struggle between sound and notation (1899-1900)

Dr. Jeroen Billiet: Couleur Locale, Disque Chantal. Ghentian musicians and the emergence of Belgian creative industries

Joanna Staruch-Smolec: Performer’s Creative Gesture as a Key in Approach to Early Recordings: The Example of Eugène Ysaÿe’s Acoustic Discs

Matthieu Thonon: The audiovisual collection of the MIM (Musical Instruments Museum of Brussels): from Mahillon to the present day

12:00 – 13:00   Session 8: Mechanical music

Dr. Joyce Tang: In search of the pianist: The Role of the Piano in Early 20^th Century piano concerto rolls 

Achille Kienholz: The fairground musical libraries: mechanical music (not) to be shown

 14:00 – 15:30   Session 9: Non classical repertoires

Dr. Arja Kastinen: Searching for traces of 19th century Karelian kantele improvisation in early recordings

Professor Hon-Lun Helan Yang: Asian Popular Music’s Global Network: “The Fragrance of the Durians” and its Related Recordings

Dr. Riccardo La Spina: ¡Dobla, Campana! – New Phonographic Implications for a Zarzuela Vocality in Emigrantes

16:00 – 16:45  Workshop 3: tba