Sandy Burnett introduces a concert given last week as part of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's first tour to the USA. The orchestra is heard performing in one of the finest concert halls in the world - Symphony Hall, Boston, home to the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops. Hamish MacCunn's enchanting overture Land of the Mountain and the Flood, which takes its title from The Lay of the Last Minstrel by Walter Scott, opens the programme with a flavour of Scotland and the programme ends with Beethoven's seventh symphony, a work that was described by Wagner as "the apotheosis of the dance". The soloist in Rachmaninov's first piano concerto is Stephen Hough, no stranger to American audiences. The Washington Post has said of his playing, "Unlike so many of his contemporaries, Stephen Hough's awesome technique is only part of a larger musical intelligence and passion. His buttery phrasing, dynamic shading,
Horowitz-like pedaling and uncanny ability to bring forth both the details and the overall structure of a work are nothing short of phenomenal." Stephen Hough (piano), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conductor Osmo Vanska

MacCunn Overture: Land of the Mountain and the Flood
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 1 in F sharp minor
Beethoven Symphony No 7 in A