Publicity Shots - 8514 (c) Kaupo KikkasDrop ShadowSIMONCALLAGHANpianist

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.

1950

Concert

10th October7pmWigmore Hall

Performers
Roger Sacheverell Coke (piano) Marianne Mislap-Kapper (mezzo-soprano) Barbara Welby (soprano) Watson Forbes (viola) Sela Trau (cello) Harold Fairhurst (violin)
Programme
Coke
Viola Sonata in C minor, Op. 60 (Premiere)
Coke
30 Songs for low voice, Op. 58 (Eight songs, for mezzo-soprano)
Coke
The Cenci, Op. 41 (opera in three acts)
Coke
Elegiac Trio for piano, violin and cello in C minor, Op. 32
Notes
The second of two Wigmore Hall recitals a week apart, given from Coke's own typescript programme, and an evening of three first performances. The Viola Sonata Op. 60 was played for the first time by its dedicatee Watson Forbes. Eight of the Burns settings Op. 58 were sung for the first time: Despondency, Phillis the Fair, Open the Door to me O, Though Fickle Fortune, Innocence, Wilt thou be my Dearie, Thou whom chance may hither lead, and The Banks of Cree. And two scenes from The Cenci Op. 41 were staged in concert, from Act 2, Scene I and the first part of Scene III, the music for Beatrice and Lucretia. That was nine years before the opera reached the stage at the Scala Theatre. The programme closed with the Elegiac Trio Op. 32. The two singers are billed as Marianne Mislap-Kapper and Barbara Lind, the latter being one of Barbara Welby's own names.
Source
Concert programme in Derbyshire Record Office, 10 October 1950 — Coke0055 Concert flyer in Derbyshire Record Office Coke Cello Sonata No. 2 score Free Press, 19 January 1951 — Coke0178
Provenance
Derbyshire Record Office, Chesterfield Library, Coke's Scrapbook (Coke0142–Coke0296)

Privacy statement