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Prior to the main portion of the Scottish Programme, a short introductory Lecture-Recital on old Scottish instrumental music will be given by Mr. David Stephen, Director of the Music Institute of the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, with Illustrations by The Station Orchestra

Hamish MacCunn's untimely death during the war years, at the age of forty-eight, deprived us of a composer who responded finely to the influences of his nationality. His Tone Poems, based on Scots subjects, and his Operas Jeanie Deans and Diarmid, show delicacy, insight, and a power of graphic expression. His Concert Overture, Land of the Mountain and the Flood, written while MacCunn was a student at the Royal College of Music, has as a motto the familiar passage from Scott's Lady of the Lake, beginning 'O Caledonia stern and wild, meet nurse for a poetic child!' The typically Scots First Main Tune comes at once, on the 'Cellos. A new Clarinet phrase leads, through various keys, to the Second Main Tune, like an old love-ballad. These subjects, treated, are worked up into a romantic and exhilarating celebration in music of the beauties of the composer's native land.

Sir Alexander Mackenzie has always been very happy in works reflecting in some way the spirit of his native Scotland... The Burns Rhapsody treats in its three linked sections three of the many old tunes for which the poet wrote verses..... ;
The first section deals, in appropriately dignified and resolute style, with Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bleil.
This section leads without break into the second, which is based on the minor-key melody of a song beginning 'She's fair and fause that causes my smart.' The air is known in very early collections as The Lads of Leith.
The last section of the Rhapsody has for its main tune an air originally known as Salt Fish and Dumplings, to which Burns wrote verses called The Cardin' o't. The air is played, after a fairly lengthy prelude, by Oboe, accompanied only by Woodwind, and is then given a very lively run by the whole Orchestra.

Contributors

Speaker:
Mr. David Stephen
Musicians:
The Station Orchestra

5IT Birmingham

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About this data

This data is drawn from the Radio Times magazine between 1923 and 2009. It shows what was scheduled to be broadcast, meaning it was subject to change and may not be accurate. More