Remarkable Nightingale recording

[The Woodman]

I've just listened to a couple of remarkable recordings of a Nightingale courtesy of a link at the end of a magazine article.

Music and Nature: Features

I've precied this text from the article and hope I don't get into trouble for doing it.

Beatrice Harrison was a leading cellist of her generation, and friend of composers such as Delius and Elgar. She had the habit of playing her cello in the wooded garden of her cottage in Oxted, Surrey, near London. One evening in 1923 she was joined by a nightingale and was so enchanted by the sound that she persuaded Lord Reith, the director of the BBC at the time, to broadcast the cello-nightingale duet on live radio. Accordingly on May 19, 1924 the first ever live outdoor broadcast was arranged.

They interrupted the Savoy Orphean Saturday evening performance to go to Ms. Harrison playing Elgar, Dvorak, and the Londonderry Air ("Danny Boy"). No birds. The finally fifteen minutes before the end of the broadcast the nightingales started chirping.

On May 19, 1942, three years into the Second World War, the BBC was back in the same garden planning to broadcast the nightingales (sans cello). But 197 bombers, Wellingtons and Lancasters, began flying overhead on their way to raids in Mannheim and the engineer realized a live broadcast of this event would break security. The recording went ahead anyway since the lines to the BBC were open and a two-sided record was made, the first side with the departing planes, the second with their return (eleven fewer).

This recording is so poignant with the sound of the bombers behind the beauty of the bird song.

[loripo]

I can't play it - (needs realplayer) but I have heard it a number of times on the beeb, really beautiful.
(Now you have got a response;-))

[The Woodman]

I was wondering who was going to be the first to rise to the bait! - thank you loripo

That's saved a duck.

[BigAl]

Ive just been listening to a progreamme on BBC Radio 3 about this :-)

Absolutely incredible!

[BigAl]

Here's another link to the recording of nightingales + bombers:

Music and Nature: Features

[The Woodman]

Quite coincidentally I was listening to the Randy Bachman's Vinyl Tap show a couple of weeks ago in the wilds of British Columbia. Paul Jones and Manfred Mann got a mention. When I got home I did some research on MM via Wiki discography to find a song with a keyboard break in it and found they recorded a track called Nightingales and Bombers - is that weird or what?

[BigAl]

Amazing!. Do you think the track is about that event, or is it coincidence?

[The Woodman]

It's the real thing. I've just lifted this from Wiki...

Nightingales and Bombers, The Roaring Silence, and Watch are considered the highlight of the Earth Band's achievement.[citation needed] Watch produced another hit single in "Davy's on the Road Again", and the albums were innovative and original despite the dependence on covers of other artists' songs. Nightingales and Bombers took its title from a World War II naturalist's recording of a nightingale singing in a garden as warplanes flew overhead; the recording appears in a track on the album.

and

The riff in "Fat Nelly" from Nightingales and Bombers uses the opening phrase of the String Quartet No. 1 by Janáček.

Listen to it on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygehSufwbVs

Rubbish pics - should have come to WAB for a Nightingale image!

I cannot find any reference to Beatrice Harrison playing Janáček to the Nightingales though.

[Jim Ford]

Originally Posted by loripo

I can't play it - (needs realplayer)

No it doesn't!

Download VLC - it's free and will play almost any media file you throw at it. Get it here:

VideoLAN - VLC media player - Open Source Multimedia Framework and Player

I don't know why people bother with anything else!

Jim

[BigAl]

That's very interesting, The Woodman