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.

1971

Broadcast

26th August4.15pmAbbotsholme School, Staffordshire (BBC Radio 3)

Performers
Moura Lympany (piano)
Programme
Debussy
Poissons d'or (Images, Book 2)
Ravel
Ondine (Gaspard de la nuit)
Ravel
Toccata (Le tombeau de Couperin)
Coke
24 Preludes for piano, Op. 33/34
Chopin
Nocturne in B. Op 62 No 1
Chopin
Scherzo in B minor
Notes
The Radio Times names the two preludes played: no. 2 in A minor and no. 11 in B, from Book 1. They came second in a recital of Debussy, Ravel and Chopin. The broadcast is of a concert given the previous September. The society was the ABBOTSHOLME ARTS SOCIETY, run by the school's director of music Gordon Clark, and Coke was present and was acclaimed by the audience. Three published accounts and the Radio Times billing all give Arts rather than Music (Coke0018, Coke0043, Coke0111, Coke0015); the name has been corrected here. Moura Lympany was already booked to give the recital and agreed to include the two preludes at Clark's suggestion. The concert set the whole of the last two years in motion. It was followed by a BBC interview and a recorded recital, also broadcast, and then by the trio commissioned from Coke by Christopher Hyde-Smith and Marisa Robles. This broadcast was fourteen months before his death.
Source
Radio Times billing, 26 August 1971, via BBC Genome — Coke0043 David Graham, Laurels, February 1972 — Coke0018 Robert Innes-Smith, The Morning Telegraph, Sheffield, late 1972 — Coke0111 Rob Barnett, British Music Society News, September 1992 — Coke0015
Provenance
BBC Genome (Coke0043)

Privacy statement