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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.

1935

Concert

27th JanuaryEveningBradbury Hall, Brampton, Chesterfield

Performers
Roger Sacheverell Coke (piano) Dr J. Frederic Staton (conductor) Chesterfield Symphony Orchestra Millicent Ward (soprano) Barbara Welby (soprano)?
Programme
Coke
Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 13 (withdrawn) (Premiere)
Coke
Piano Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 12 (withdrawn) (Premiere)
Coke
Elegy for a Dead Musician for contralto, violin and orchestra (or piano), Op. 16 (withdrawn)
Coke
Six Songs for soprano or tenor, Op. 19
Notes
The premiere of the First Symphony, op. 13. The Derbyshire Times of 1 February 1935 places the concert at the Bradbury Hall, Brampton, Chesterfield, one of a series of popular Sunday-evening concerts by the Chesterfield Symphony Orchestra. Coke brought his own Steinway concert grand from Brookhill for the occasion, 'the first time, it is believed, that such an instrument has been used in public in Chesterfield'. The orchestra was sixty strong and the audience over five hundred; Coke attended with his mother. He also played the Piano Sonata No. 1 in D minor, op. 12. Dr J. Frederic Staton spoke from the platform and called the symphony 'definitely post-romantic'. Works by other composers made up the rest of the evening. Twenty-three publications survive with only nineteen dates between them, so the reports are listed here without dates.
Source
Programme Sheffield Independent Daily Mail Derbyshire Times and Chesterfield Herald Derbyshire Times and Chesterfield Herald Nottingham Evening Post Nottingham Guardian Nottingham Journal and Express Yorkshire Telegraph and Star Daily Mail Derbyshire Advertiser Unknown Bristol publication Unknown publication Derbyshire Advertiser Derby Evening Telegraph Derby Daily Telegraph Derby Daily Telegraph Sheffield Independent Nottingham Evening Post Nottingham Evening Post Western Daily Press Sheffield Telegraph Derby Daily Telegraph
Provenance
Coke's Scrapbook (Coke0142–Coke0296), British Newspaper Archive (Coke0409–Coke0586)

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