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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.

1941

Concert

22nd FebruaryAfternoonSouthwell Minster, Nottingham

Performers
Roger Sacheverell Coke (piano) Richard Austin (conductor) Brookhill Symphony Orchestra
Programme
Coke
Piano Concerto No. 3 in E♭, Op. 30
Coke
Prelude to 'The Cenci' for orchestra, Op. 41 (Premiere)
Wagner
Siegfried Idyll
Brahms
Symphony No.3
Rachmaninoff
The Rock
Notes
Given under C.E.M.A. auspices. The Nottingham Journal's review of 24 February 1941 names the orchestra as the Brookhill Symphony Orchestra, Coke's own, 'founded last year' and comprising over fifty amateur and professional players. The programme was Rachmaninoff's 'The Rock' — its first performance in England since 1898 — the premiere of Coke's Prelude to 'The Cenci', op. 41, dedicated to Richard Austin, and Coke's Third Piano Concerto, op. 30, with the composer as soloist; after the interval, Wagner's 'Siegfried Idyll' and Brahms's Third Symphony. A collection in aid of the R.A.F. Benevolent Fund was taken at the interval. The Western Daily Press report is dated 21 February 1942, a year after the concert, and is given here as it stands.
Source
Nottingham Journal, 24 February 1941 — Coke0529 Western Daily Press, 21 February 1942
Provenance
British Newspaper Archive (Coke0409–Coke0586)

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