Arnold Cooke
Arnold Atkinson Cooke (4 November 1906 – 13 August 2005) was a British composer, a pupil of Paul Hindemith. He wrote a considerable amount of chamber music, including five string quartets and many instrumental sonatas, much of which is only now becoming accessible through modern recordings. Cooke also composed two operas (still unperformed), six symphonies and several concertos. Education 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. 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. 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). Career Cooke moved to London in 1938 to further his career. 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. Louis Kentner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult premiered his Piano Concerto in 1943, 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 and Eric Parkin with the BBC Northern Orchestra under Brian Priestman in 1972. During the Second World War, he served in the Royal Navy, first in the aircraft carrier