A PERFECT COMBINATION ?...

There are, of course, many examples of the perfect combination - the Everly Brothers, Morcambe and Wise, fish and chips, Compton and Edrich;  the list goes on.  But it was a rare treat to see the BBC of all people coming up with a combination of image and music that so beautifully captured the moment.

Now I`m not one to heap praise on the BBC - their latest wheeze is to start charging us over-75s for the privilege of watching endless repeats during the daytime of such classic mediocrity as Homes under the Hammer and Bargain Hunt.   So I don`t watch it, preferring instead to take nocturnal refuge in BBC4, who produce a wide range of documentaries across a wide range of subjects. 

And the other evening they showed a documentary about Joseph Wright of Derby - one of England`s most accomplished artists, who was outrageously dismissed by Kenneth Clarke in his epic series `Civilisation` as a `mediocrity.`  He could not have been more wrong, for Wright produced a dazzling collection of breathtaking portraits and images of England, I always remember on a visit to the National Gallery in London some years ago that the painting that attracted the biggest audience was Wright`s `Experiment on a bird with the air pump,` which showed his mastery of light and composition.

The image above shows his representation of Sir Richard Arkwright`s cotton spinning mill at Cromford in Derbyshire = what Blake described later as a `dark satanic mill` -  but it was the music which accompanied that sequence in the documentary that complemented Wright`s scene so well.  Wright had painted an almost pastoral vision of the mill set in the seductive English countryside and I recognised the music that went with it as `Touch her soft lips and part` from William Walton`s Henry V Suite.   It seemed a perfect combination, although it may have ignored the less than agreeable reality of the working conditions inside the mill, so maybe not so perfect after all?.

Anyway, here`s the music, which will bring a few moments of calm to our mad world.....