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.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) lived a lonely and troubled existence that ended in madness and suicide, yet his paintings vibrate with energy and colour. His works probably are reproduced more often and are more universally familiar than those of any other artist. On this audio, the world of van Gogh is given a musical perspective with a carefully chosen selection of pieces by the finest composers of his time. In the booklet, Hugh Griffith provides explanatory notes on his life and musical environment.

The character and ideals of this haunted, introverted, talented painter are reflected here in contemporaneous music of a new-found intensity of expression. Although van Gogh's isolated existence precludes any direct connections, we see, for example, how the drive of composers such as Franck and Berlioz to elevate the importance of orchestral colour has a clear parallel in the art of van Gogh, and Gaugin, who used colour not as superficial decoration but as an essential organising feature of their paintings.