Nina Milkina

Nina Milkina (; January 27, 1919 – November 29, 2006) was an English pianist of Russian descent. She began practicing piano when she was young alongside multiple prominent pianists and composers, and regularly performed for soldiers during World War II, traveling to their stations for solos. She was one of the first performers to appear on the BBC Third Programme, during which she regularly performed Mozart solos.

Life and career Nina Milkina was born on January 27, 1919 to a Jewish family in Moscow. Her father was a portrait artist and her mother was a harpist. Aged seven, she began learning the piano with Lev Conus and Alexander Glazunov before moving with her family to Paris in 1926. When she was 11 years old she made her first public debut in Paris with the Orchestre Lamoureux. That year she performed multiple works to Ralph Hawkes of Boosey & Hawkes, who later published some of them. A music critic at the time stated that her piece My Toys was too difficult for a child to play, without being aware that Milkina had composed it aged 11. She also began regularly soloing at the National Gallery of London in recitals created by Myra Hess. Around this time, she encountered her future husband, the then-soldier Alastair Sedgwick, after performing a concert in Bournemouth. In the late 1940s, she became one of the first artists to perform on the BBC Third Programme, where she became well-known for her weekly Mozart solos.

Nina Milkina [was] widely recognised as an outstanding artiste and interpreter of the classical repertoire and in particular of the piano works of Mozart. — Solent Reporter In 1949, she joined a musical group set up by Harry Blech along with Denis Matthews, Peter Schidlof and Norbert Brainin among others. In 1968 she also began performing alongside the Oromonte Piano Trio. She was diagnosed with cancer in the 1980s, forcing her to stop touring and to only record music in a studio. She died at the age of 87 on November 29, 2006, in London.