Beatrice Harrison - '... A Nightingale Singing Along With Her'

'... A Nightingale Singing Along With Her'

Beatrice Harrison's performances became well known through broadcast in the early days of BBC sound radio. She made some 'live' recordings in which she sat and played her cello in the garden of her house at Oxted, and the nightingales which frequented the place sang as she was playing. The tunes thus recorded included Songs my mother taught me (Dvorak), Chant Hindu (Rimsky-Korsakov) and the Londonderry Air (the tune of Danny Boy). Records were also issued of the nightingales singing alone and of the dawn chorus in the same garden. These recordings were extremely popular.

At least one person, however, has suggested that the bird sounds heard on the BBC recordings were not those of a real nightingale, but of a talented whistler, Maude Gould .

Beatrice Harrison appears as herself in The Demi-Paradise, as a cellist playing accompaniment to the singing of nightingales for a BBC broadcast.