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Concerts

© Kaupo Kikkas

This is every performance of Coke's music that has so far been traced, from his schooldays at Eton in 1929 to the present, assembled from printed programmes, press notices, Radio Times billings, his mother's household accounts and the composer's own annotations. It is not a complete record and it cannot be: he was played most often in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, sometimes in a converted stable at his own house, and much of that went unreported. There is a gap of twenty-five years between 1987 and 2012 in which exactly one performance has been found. If you know of a concert that is missing, or have a programme, a cutting or a memory of hearing this music, please do get in touch.

1965

Concert

10th April3.30pmMusic Room at Brookhill Hall, Pinxton

Performers
Richard Webb (cello) Brian Suter (tenor) Roger Sacheverell Coke (piano)
Programme
Coke
Cello Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 24
Coke
Six Songs for soprano or tenor, Op. 39 (Four songs: A little music; I will tell you what love is; Love's a ghost; Romance)
Coke
Eight Songs for soprano or tenor, Op. 43 (Three songs: A Farewell; Beauty Clear and Fair; Turn thy face away)
Coke
15 Variations and Finale for piano in C minor, Op. 37
Coke
14 Songs, from Rhymes and Roundelayes for high voice, Op. 54 (Three songs: Sickles Sound; Up, Amaryllis; The Awakening Year — Premiere (nos. 7 & 8))
Coke
Song (Premiere)
Coke
Poem for cello, piano and small orchestra, Op. 36
Notes
An all-Coke concert with four first performances, all marked as such on the printed programme: 'Sickles Sound' and 'Up, Amaryllis' from the Rhymes and Roundelayes op. 54, and both of the two new songs of 1964, 'The Moon' (Shelley) and 'The Rose of the Year' (Yeats). The rest of the programme was the First Cello Sonata op. 24; four songs from op. 39 and three from op. 43; the Fifteen Variations and Finale op. 37; and, after the interval, the Poem op. 36, given with the orchestral part played on the piano. Writing to Brian Suter on 8 March, Coke had proposed a slightly different second group: 'let's do 4 of the op.54 and the 2 new songs, which I am sending you'. Three of the op. 54 songs were given in the end, and the sources do not say which was dropped. The same letter fixes the date around the cellist's availability, asks Suter to leave the books behind after the rehearsal so that 'Mr.Copestake can get to work on them', and looks forward to the concert because 'it will be nicer here then, in the spring'.
Source
Printed programme, 10 April 1965 — Coke0014 Stanley Berrill, 10 April 1965 Roger Sacheverell Coke to Brian Suter, 8 March 1965 — Coke0047
Provenance
Brian Suter: correspondence (Coke0045–Coke0048); Concert Programmes collection (Coke0113–Coke0141)

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