Martyn Brabbins: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra - Wallace: Symphonic Poems

William Wallace was a classical scholar, a doctor and eye surgeon, a poet and dramatist, a writer on music and musicians, and the man described by Shaw as 'a young Scotch composer with a very tender and sympathetic talent'. His orchestral compositions rank amongst them the earliest attempts at the genre of the symphonic poem to be made in the British Isles, his choice of subjects for these being at least as wide-ranging as his own interests and achievements.