On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring

[4] Although completed second, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring is designated the first of the two, which were billed as "Stimmungsbilder" – "mood-pictures" – with the titles "Beim ersten Kuckucksruf im Frühling" and "Sommernacht am Flusse".

[4] The first performance in Britain was presented by the Royal Philharmonic Society at a Queen's Hall concert on 20 January 1914, conducted by Willem Mengelberg.

Grainger compared the two treatments: "Grieg's is concentrated, pristine, miniature and drastic … Delius's has the opulent richness of an almost over-ripe fruit and the luxurious long decline of a sunset".

Sir Thomas Beecham, Delius's most prominent British champion,[9] called On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring "easily the best known of all our composer's output".

[10] Beecham said of this piece and the companion Summer Night on the River: "In their respective ways they touch perfection, although I cannot agree with the judgment of one commentator that they display Frederick's powers of orchestration at their best.

In a 1973 study Lionel Carley wrote that the music gives "an instinctive feeling that, wherever the inspiration may be rooted, an essentially English natural setting is being evoked".

[11] In 2004 Diana McVeagh wrote of the Delius miniatures, "These exquisite idylls, for all their composer's German descent and French domicile, spell 'England' for most listeners".