This uniquely cross-sectional approach to culture combines great art with great music, and examines the connections between the two. Each piece of music from the carefully chosen selection takes on a new dimension and provides a musical context to the work of leading painters and sculptors. This fascinating series, with a colour booklet including a chronology of the principal artistic and political developments of the period, broadens our view of the music itself.
In the final period of his life, the paintings of J.M.W Turner (1775-1851) baffled his public with the daring originality of their colours. But by then he was already a great British institution and revered as the greatest landscape painter of the age. On this audio, the world of Turner is given a musical perspective with a carefully chosen selection of pieces by the finest composers of his time. Inthe booklet, Hugh Griffith provides explanatory notes on his life and musical environment.
As soon as it is revealed that Turner was friendly with the organist and composer John Danby, who very likely fostered in the painter a love of music, a new dimension to his art is uncovered. Direct connections between his paintings and works by Berlioz and Mendelssohn, for example, draw the two worlds together, and encourage a broader perspective of each.
