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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.

1974

Concert

15th June8pmAlfreton Hall

Performers
Allan Schiller (piano)
Programme
Coke
24 Preludes for piano, Op. 33/34
Mozart
Piano Sonata in A K331
Beethoven
Waldstein Sonata in C Op. 53
Chopin
Impromptu in C♯ minor
Chopin
Berceuse
Chopin
Scherzo in B♭ minor
Notes
The second Alfreton Hall memorial concert, given by Allan Schiller. The eleven Preludes of Op. 33 were the only Coke in a programme otherwise of Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin. The booklet records that Coke's Steinway concert grand had passed, by the kindness of his family, into the permanent possession of Alfreton Hall, and that this was the first recital since its renovation by Foulds of Derby. It also quotes a letter Sidney Harrison wrote to Coke in 1969: 'I am very glad to have your preludes, real music. One hears so many extraordinary humourless noises... Nobody seeks to compose anything captivating, like your No. 8, so thoroughly pianistic like all of them.' The first of the two publications in the source list is unnamed and undated.
Source
Unknown publication Concert programme and flyer in Derbyshire Record Office, 15 June 1974 — Coke0075
Provenance
Brian Suter (Coke0113–Coke0141), Derbyshire Record Office (Coke0075)

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