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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.

1943

Concert

26th AprilAfternoonAnderson Hall, York

Performers
Roger Sacheverell Coke (piano) Northern Command Orchestra Captain Gordon W— (conductor; the surname is cut off in the only surviving cutting)
Notes
The exact date is not recorded, and the date given here is that of the Yorkshire Post's review rather than of the concert itself. Writing to Myles Hildyard on 17 March 1943, Coke said he was still to play two works of his own at York with an army orchestra, so the concert falls after that date; the Yorkshire Post reviewed it on 26 April 1943. An afternoon concert in aid of a war fund, with the Princess Royal present, given by an orchestra of nineteen drawn from Northern Command. Coke's letter says two of his own works were played; the Nottingham Journal of 15 May 1943 names only the Third Piano Concerto, and the second work is not recorded anywhere. The Yorkshire Post's verdict, quoted on Coke's own flyer that July, is the best short account of his music by a contemporary: 'music that might be described as "new romantic," full of harmonic subtleties and yet owing allegiance to form and a broad style, which in these days must be welcomed.'
Source
Coke to Myles Hildyard, 17 March 1943 — Coke0840 Yorkshire Post, 26 April 1943 — Coke0051 and Coke0167 Nottingham Journal, 15 May 1943 — Coke0523
Provenance
University of Nottingham, THF/C/3/5/20; Coke's Scrapbook (Coke0142–Coke0296); British Newspaper Archive (Coke0409–Coke0586)

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