Arnold Cooke

Cooke was born at Gomersal, West Yorkshire, into a family of carpet manufacturers. As a child, Cooke learned to play the piano, and later the cello, and began composing by the age of 7 or 8. He was educated at Streete Preparatory School, Repton School and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read History, taking Part 1 of his Tripos in 1927, earning his B.A. He changed to read music with his composition teacher E. J. Dent.[2] At Cambridge, Cooke continued to play the cello in the CUMS orchestra and in a string quartet. He was President of the Cambridge Musical Society from 1927 to 1928.

In 1929, he gained his Music degree and went to Berlin where he studied composition and piano at the Berlin University of the Arts under Paul Hindemith. Hindemith's composition class also included Harald Genzmer, Oskar Sala and Franz Reizenstein, the latter remained a lifelong friend and kept Cooke's Piano Concerto in his repertoire.[3]

He later became Musical Director of the Festival Theatre at Cambridge, and in 1933 was appointed a professor at the Royal Manchester College of Music (now merged into the Royal Northern College of Music). In 1948, through the recommendation of E. J. Dent, he obtained a doctorate from Cambridge, submitting as his composition portfolio his Symphony No. 1 (1946–47), Piano Concerto (1939-40) and Sonata for viola and piano (1936–37).

Cooke moved to London in 1938 to further his career.[4] In the 1930s, he carved out a reputation for himself as a promising young composer, and his music was taken up by leading interpreters. The harpist Maria Korchinska introduced his Harp Quintet in 1932; Sir Henry Wood conducted his Concert Overture No. 1 at the 1934 Promenade Concerts and the Griller Quartet premiered his String Quartet No. 1 in 1935. In 1936 Havergal Brian singled out for praise a cantata, Holderneth, a setting of a text by the American poet Edward Sweeney.[1]

Louis Kentner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult premiered his Piano Concerto in 1943,[5] [6] which he had completed just before his call-up in 1941. The concerto had been commissioned by the South African pianist Adolph Hallis in 1939 but the outbreak of WWII meant that Hallis had to return to South Africa. Kentner gave the first performance in a BBC studio broadcast on 11 November 1943. The work received subsequent broadcast performances from Franz Reizenstein with the BBC Northern Orchestra under Clarence Raybould in 1952 [7] and Eric Parkin with the BBC Northern Orchestra under Brian Priestman in 1972.[8]

During the Second World War, he served in the Royal Navy, first in the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious, and subsequently as a liaison officer in a Norwegian escort vessel and a Dutch tug that took part in the D-Day Landings. After demobilisation he returned to London in 1946, becoming a founder member of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain. From 1947 until his retirement in 1978, he was Professor of Harmony and Composition at Trinity College of Music in London. After a stroke in 1993, he virtually ceased to compose, but lived to the age of 98, dying at his nursing home in Five Oak Green in Kent in 2005.[1]

As a composer Cooke was highly productive and tended to work in traditional genres. His early music follows an English tradition with traces of Elgar, John Ireland and others, but this changes drastically from the time of his study with Hindemith. The music of the 1930s is far more stark, overtly contrapuntal and dissonant, but by 1937 is settling into a style which would essentially remain with him for most of his life. If the mature music shows the influence of Hindemith, Bartók and Shostakovich, it is also leavened with a more English sense of lyricism, whilst the shadow of Brahms is also present.[2]

Cooke wrote two operas – Mary Barton (completed 1954) after the novel by Mrs. Gaskell and The Invisible Duke (1976). Neither has yet received a performance. The ballet Jabez and the Devil (1961) was a commission from the Royal Ballet. A suite from the ballet has been recorded.[9] He composed six symphonies and several concertos, including two Clarinet Concertos (1956 and 1982), the first recorded.[10] There are also recordings of four of the six symphonies (Nos 1, 3, 4 and 5), along with other orchestral works mostly issued on the Lyrita label. The sixth symphony finally received its first broadcast performance at the BBC studios in Salford on 7 September 2016, 32 years after it was completed.[11]

His output of chamber music is copious, including a clarinet quintet, five string quartets, many instrumental sonatas, and some important vocal music. The Clarinet Quintet is available on Hyperion.[10] The Pleyel Ensemble and MPR Records has issued a series of four CDs of chamber music recordings, the fourth of which was issued in September 2020.[12] Most of the works are recorded for the first time. The Bridge Quartet is in the process of recording all five quartets.[13] The organ music has been recorded by Tom Winpenny on Toccata.[14]