19 May 1924 was the first day radio listeners heard a cello playing while nightingales sang, live from a Surrey garden. The cellist was Beatrice Harrison, who had recently performed the British debut of Delius's Cello Concerto, which had been written for her. The nightingales were the birds in the woods around Harrison's home in Oxted, who were attracted by the sound of her cello.
Harrison first became aware of the birds one summer evening as she practised her instrument in the garden. As she played she heard a nightingale answer and then echo the notes of the cello. When this duet was repeated night after night Harrison persuaded the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ that it should be broadcast. Engineers carried out a successful test and the following night the live broadcast took place. Harrison played and the nightingales, eventually, joined in.
The public reaction was such that the experiment was repeated the next month and then every spring for the following 12 years. Harrison and the nightingales became internationally renowned and she received 50,000 fan letters. Writing in the Radio Times before the second broadcast Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Managing Director John Reith said the nightingale:
has swept the country...with a wave of something closely akin to emotionalism, and a glamour of romance has flashed across the prosaic round of many a life.
May anniversaries
-
Bread
1 May 1986 -
Top of the Form
1 May 1948 -
First VHF transmitter opens at Wrotham
2 May 1955 -
Horizon first transmitted
2 May 1964 -
Luther
4 May 2010 -
The Ascent of Man first broadcast
5 May 1973 -
Wedding of Princess Margaret
6 May 1960 -
VE Day broadcasts
8 May 1945 -
First gardening programme
9 May 1931 -
The Queen’s Hall destroyed by bombing
10 May 1941 -
Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth
12 May 1937 -
First episode of Bucknell's House
14 May 1962 -
Broadcasting House opens
15 May 1932 -
Strictly Come Dancing
15 May 2004 -
The Debussy film debuts
18 May 1965 -
Beatrice Harrison, cello and nightingale duet
19 May 1924 -
Churchill's first broadcast as Prime Minister
19 May 1940 -
Thomas Woodrooffe at the Coronation Fleet Review
20 May 1937 -
Opening of Lime Grove Studios
21 May 1950 -
Eurovision first broadcast
24 May 1956 -
That's Life
26 May 1973 -
The Goon Show
28 May 1951 -
The Great War
30 May 1964 -
Tumbledown
31 May 1988