Concerts

The first of the memorial concerts, and the programme calls itself that. Beethoven's Violin Sonata in D, Op. 12 No. 1 opened; Coke's Six Songs Op. 19 and his Fifteen Variations and Finale Op. 37 followed; and the evening closed with Rachmaninoff's Elegiac Trio in D minor, chosen because 1973 was the centenary of his birth and because he and Coke had been friends. Alison Gordon played Coke's own Steinway concert grand, the twenty-first birthday present from his mother, which had come to Alfreton Hall with his scores. The programme states that the BBC was recording the two Coke works for a later broadcast. The notes were written by Clive Jones. It was planned within a month of Coke's death and was first intended for late February or early March 1973. The Derbyshire Times of 24 November 1972 reported that Clive Jones, a master at the Mortimer Wilson School in Alfreton, hoped it might become an annual event, that it would include a work by Rachmaninoff, and that the Alfreton Hall String Quartet would take part; the quartet does not appear on the programme as it was finally given (Coke0104). The same report records that Coke's Steinway had already been moved from Brookhill to Alfreton Hall and was used there for the first time at a concert on Saturday 18 November 1972. The same month's Derbyshire Life and Countryside carried Jones's obituary essay on Coke and announced the concert at its foot, which is what dates that article to May 1973.