I THOUGHT I`D HEARD IT ALL..

The other evening I recorded some late night viewing on BBC2.  It was Nicholas Roeg`s 1971 masterpiece, Walkabout, with Jenny Agutter and Roeg`s own son, Luc, starring in the tale of two children abandoned by their father to the vagaries of the Australian bush. It`s a classic of its kind, full of breathtaking imagery, exploring the perfect counterpoint between the urban jungle of Sydney and the reality of surviving in the wilderness - although one is left in little doubt as to which of those two environments is the most appealing.

If you get the chance to see it, it`s well worth it for all kinds of reasons, not least being the wonderful score by that most gifted of composers, John Barry, who sadly left us in 2011.   He is perhaps best remembered for scoring the James Bond films and many more besides - notably Dances with Wolves and Out of Africa, for both of which he received an Oscar.

I have been a fan of John Barry and his music for many years and I thought I had heard it all.  But I was captivated by his score for Walkabout which, even back in the late 60s/early 70s when the film was made, gave us a foretaste of those towering melodic string compositions which became Barry`s trademark for his film scores over the next 40 years. I`m not sure that  film music - or indeed music generally - gets any more haunting and emotive than this:-