Singing with the Nightingales

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BBC Radio 4 - Singing with the Nightingales

Sam Lee marks the 100th anniversary of cellist Beatrice Harrison's duet with a nightingale

Marking the 100th anniversary today of a famous outside broadcast, when a nightingale joined cellist Beatrice Harrison, folk singer Sam Lee sings with nightingales, and a cello.

Late in the evening on 19th May, 1924, the BBC made its first live wildlife outside broadcast, from the cellist Beatrice Harrison's garden. A nightingale joined in, singing as she played and listeners were entranced.

100 years to the day, Radio 4 mark the anniversary, broadcasting again 'Singing with the Nightingales'. In this the folk musician Sam Lee finds, somewhere in southern England, "some melodious plot/ Of beechen green, and shadows numberless", as Keats puts it in his 'Ode to a Nightingale', where the birds are singing "of summer with full throated ease". 
 
Sam, with the cellist Francesca Ter-Berg, violinist Flora Curzon and viola player Laurel Pardue, sings traditional songs that feature nightingales, such as 'The Tan Yard Side', to the nightingales as they sing in the thickets. Sam also considers our relationship with this amazing songster, which appears in so many songs and poems. We hear, too, Beatrice's reminiscence of that first nightingale broadcast, 100 years ago.

So popular was Beatrice Harrison's original duet that the cello and nightingale concerts were broadcast annually, eagerly awaited by listeners around the globe. We hear, too, how in 1942 this beautiful, fragile collaboration was silenced by war. 
 
Producer: Julian May

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