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Concerts

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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.

1951

Concert

13th DecemberNottingham

Performers
John Francis (flute) Watson Forbes (viola) Roger Sacheverell Coke (piano)
Programme
Coke
Viola Sonata in C minor, Op. 60
Coke
Trio for flute, viola and piano in G, Op. 59 ‘Ortina’
Notes
This concert had no source of any kind until September 2026, when the manuscripts were catalogued. Two of them place it. The Ortina Trio's index leaf carries a list of its three performances in Coke's hand, the second of which is 'Nottingham, Dec. 13 1951 (John Francis, Watson Forbes, & the Composer)'; and the first of the Burns songs is annotated 'Premiere of this Song - Dec. 13th 1951 at Nottingham'. So two works from the programme are known, and John Francis, who is not otherwise recorded here, was playing.
Source
Coke's own list of performances on the manuscript of the Ortina Trio op. 59 — Coke0790 Annotation on the manuscript of the Ten Burns Songs op. 58 — Coke0767
Provenance
Simon Callaghan's score collection

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