Coke, Roger

[grewtw]

Roger Sacheverell Coke was born at Pinxton, near Alfreton, in 1912. He was from a wealthy family, and inherited the family estate of Brookhill Hall, Pinxton at the age of two.

He began composing at Eton College, where he was taught by Henry Ley, and was influenced to take up the piano by hearing Benno Moiseiwitsch.

Coke's musical interests were strongly supported by his mother; and for his twenty-first birthday she had out-buildings on the family estate converted to a large music studio and performance space, equipped with Steinway piano, and with capacity for an audience of several hundred.

He pursued his study of composition and the piano seriously, taking piano lessons in London with Mabel Lander (herself a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky and teacher of the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret), and he was later a pupil of Alan Bush.

He made his debut as a composer-pianist in 1932 with his first piano concerto, and formed the Brookhill Symphony Orchestra in 1940 to play his own and other neglected works.

Despite his freedom from financial concerns, he suffered from depression. However, he composed a large corpus of works, with a strong emphasis on his own instrument, the piano. For the orchestra he wrote three symphonies, six piano concertos, two "vocal concertos" for soprano and orchestra and four symphonic poems. In the chamber music field there is a good deal more.

Some works were taken up by leading musicians, including pianists Charles Lynch and Moura Lympany, and he counted Moiseiwitsch and Sergei Rachmaninoff amongst his friends.

Here is a list, not altogether consistent with what is said above, of his most noteworthy productions:

Symphonies:

Symphony No. 1 in E minor, opus 13 1934

Symphony No. 2 in G minor, opus 22 1936

Symphony No. 3, opus 56 1948


Symphonic poems:

Symphonic Poem No. 1 "The Lotos Eaters", opus 45 1941

Symphonic Poem No. 2 "Elegiac Ballade", opus 51 1942

Symphonic Poem No. 3 "Dorian Gray", opus 53 1943


Concertos:

Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor, opus 1 1931

Piano Concerto No. 2 in E minor, opus 4 1933

Piano Concerto No. 3 in E flat, opus 30 1938

Piano Concerto No. 4 in C sharp minor, opus 38 1940

Piano Concerto No. 5 in D minor, opus 57 1947

Piano Concerto No. 6 in C minor, opus 63 or 79 1954

Violin Concerto, opus 80 1960

Piano Concerto in G minor, 1970


Chamber music:

Piano Quintet, opus 8

Piano Quintet, opus 65 1970

String Quartet, opus 66 1971

Piano Quintet in F minor, opus 82 1967

[Bryn]

"Coke", eh? My father used to live in Pinxton, with the Erewash running between his front garden and the road. He sold up and moved when the field behind the house became an open-cast coal mine, though not for coking coal, IIRC. I'd like to follow u by listening to some of Coke's work. I note that his third, fourth and fifth are to be found on record:



Sadly, on Hyperion, so no streaming available, but wait:

[Serial_Apologist]

It's always interesting to hear music composed in bygone idioms to see if their language is outworn, unmodified by subsequent advances, or capable of yielding anything fresh out of them, rather than sounding like pale imitations of their past.

[cloughie]

"Coke", eh? My father used to live in Pinxton, with the Erewash running between his front garden and the road. He sold up and moved when the field behind the house became an open-cast coal mine, though not for coking coal, IIRC.

That’ll be in Mr Skinner’s part of the world!