It’s not a round birthday or anything, but since it’s a Sunday and it will make for a concise post, here’s a link to some music that just makes me happy every time I hear it – especially in this recording, made for EMI in 1968, by Alexander Gibson and the Scottish National Orchestra. The team later remade it in digital sound for Chandos Records in 1981 (reissued on CD in 1985), but the second recording cannot recapture the organic flow of felicitous sunshine and galloping thunder conjured in the original. (But do get the Chandos disc also for the best recording of Malcolm Arnold’s “Tam O’Shanter Overture.”) I hope you enjoy “The Land of the Mountain and the Flood,” first performed at London’s Crystal Palace in 1887. A tip of the tam to Scottish composer Hamish MacCunn (1868-1916) on his birthday!

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PHOTO: Hamish MacCunn, before Michael Nesmith stole his look