Sunday Feature: The Cello and the Nightingale

Exactly 100 years ago, late in the evening, the BBC broadcast a live duet from a wood in deepest Surrey featuring acclaimed cellist Beatrice Harrison and a nightingale that sang as she played. It was the first-ever wildlife outside broadcast, and the first true radio hit that would become an annual spring event for the next 12 years. Writer and musician Kate Kennedy examines the events surrounding that landmark broadcast, and the somewhat overshadowed career of Harrison, who British composers were queuing up to write for. From a secret wood somewhere in southern England, Kate attempts to recreate that intimate duet between cello and nightingale to explore the ways birdsong and music can become intertwined. With contributions from cellist Julian Lloyd Webber; poet Robert Seatter; biographical editor Patricia Cleveland Peck, cellist Adrian Bradbury, communications historian Iain Logie Baird, nature writer Richard Mabey and musician and singer Sam Lee