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.

1943

Concert

8th July7.30pmQueen Mary Hall, London

Performers
Roger Sacheverell Coke (piano) Marianne Mislap-Kapper (mezzo-soprano) Sela Trau (cello) Harold Fairhurst (violin)
Programme
Coke
Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 46
Coke
Four Songs (So Quiet, Now in these fairylands, A Candle Cool, Santa Decca)
Coke
15 Variations and Finale for piano in C minor, Op. 37
Coke
Songs (TBA)
Coke
Elegiac Trio for piano, violin and cello in C minor, Op. 32
Notes
A wartime London concert at the YWCA Central Club, with the Elegiac Trio Op. 32 billed as its first London performance. Four songs were given by opus and number: 'So Quiet' Op. 42 No. 5, 'Now in these Fairylands' Op. 40 No. 3 and 'A Candle Cool' Op. 40 No. 4, all to words by Humbert Wolfe, and 'Santa Decca' Op. 49 No. 4 to Wilde. A further group after the interval was left 'to be announced' and is not recorded anywhere. Coke played a Bluthner rather than his own Steinway, and tickets were sold through the music publisher Hinrichsen Edition of Wardour Street. The flyer carries four press quotations, among them the Yorkshire Post of 26 April 1943 calling his music 'new romantic, full of harmonic subtleties and yet owing allegiance to form and a broad style'.
Source
Concert flyer and programme in Derbyshire Record Office, 8 July 1943 — Coke0051
Provenance
Manuscript front cover, Derbyshire Record Office (Coke0051)

Privacy statement