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.

1936

Broadcast

1st April7.30pmMidland Transmitter (BBC Regional Programme)

Performers
Roger Sacheverell Coke (piano) Barbara Welby (soprano) Leonard Carrodus (violin)
Programme
Coke
Six Songs for soprano or tenor, Op. 19
Coke
Piano Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 12 (withdrawn)
Coke
Elegy for a Dead Musician for contralto, violin and orchestra (or piano), Op. 16 (withdrawn)
Coke
Three Piano Concertos
Coke
Two Symphonies
Coke
Two Sonatas
Coke
17 Songs
Coke
Elegy for a Dead Musician for contralto, violin and orchestra (or piano), Op. 16 (withdrawn)
Notes
Billed by the Radio Times as "'Midland Chamber Concerts' — 13. Music of Roger Sacheverell Coke", and the billing names the programme in full: three songs from the Six Songs op. 19, being 'No longer mourn for me' (Shakespeare), 'The Daffodils' (Wordsworth) and 'When the lamp is shattered' (Shelley); the First Piano Sonata in D minor op. 12 in three movements; and the Elegy for voice, violin and pianoforte op. 16 to words by Blake. This single evening accounts for three of the seven items on Coke's own list of his BBC broadcasts, printed in January 1958, and it is the only source that says which three of the op. 19 songs were broadcast. Only the first three items are the broadcast programme proper. After the separator the column reads 'Other articles state the following:' and then a press summary of Coke's output to date (three piano concertos, two symphonies, two sonatas, 17 songs) with the Elegy named again. The summary lines are kept as programme entries so nothing is lost, but they name no catalogue items.
Source
Radio Times billing, 1 April 1936, via BBC Genome — Coke0043 Sheffield Telegraph Aberdeen Press and Journal, 1 April 1936 Derby Daily Telegraph, 2 April 1936 Derby Daily Telegraph, 27 February 1936 Dundee Evening Telegraph, 1 April 1936 Dundee Evening Telegraph, 31 March 1936 Derby Daily Telegraph, 20 March 1936 Northern Whig, 1 April 1936 Western Daily Press, 1 April 1936 Nottingham Post, 1 April 1936
Provenance
Coke's Scrapbook (Coke0142–Coke0296), British Newspaper Archive (Coke0409–Coke0586), BBC Genome (Coke0043)

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