SOMM Recordings is delighted to release "Hail Caledonia - Scotland in Music", a musical salute to their homeland by conductor Iain Sutherland and the City of Glasgow Philharmonic Orchestra. Recorded live in Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall in 1995-96 and newly re-mastered, these vivacious performances also feature the City of Glasgow Pipe Band, City of Glasgow Chorus, and bagpipers David Wotherspoon and Iain McDonald. Sutherland provides brilliant orchestral arrangements of The Black Bear Salute, reputedly the British army’s fastest regimental march, and the timeless Amazing Grace, together with his own colourful Three Scottish Castles - Suite.
Roy Williamson’s anthemic Flower of Scotland is heard alongside Robert Docker’s Abbey’s Craig, better known as Scots Wha Hae, and Granville Bantock’s luscious treatment of a traditional Scottish waulking song, Kishmul’s Galley. Also featured is Mendelssohn’s lively Scherzo, fuelled by a traditional "Scotch snap", from his "Scottish" Symphony and Malcolm Arnold’s wonderfully realised Four Scottish Dances.
Music by Granville Bantock, Eric Coates, Ernest Tomlinson and Alexander McKenzie is heard alongside the theme tunes to two hugely popular Scottish television dramas, Hamish McCunn’s Land of the Mountain and the Flood, theme to Sutherland’s Law, and Arthur Blake’s Take the High Road. And to end, the infectious Devil’s Finale/Reel o’ Tulloch from Ian Whyte’s ballet score Donald of the Burthens.
The result is a glorious musical celebration of the Saltire and the tartan, with informative booklet notes by Robert Matthew-Walker. © SOMM Recordings