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'Not that well known but as good as anything written by a British composer.'

It is a very nice piece of music, very catchy, and especially good when one considers MacCunn wrote it when only 18. It was critically rebuffed at the time by many and has had a few recorded advocates in recent years.
I think it was the signature tune to a tv series some years back about a Scottish lawyer. (Maybe with the big bloke who was in Budgie).

But it's not that good that it equates with the great works written by many other British composers. The list of works that are better than this overture is simply too long to list.

Perhaps technically it had flaws, but as Sir Thomas Beecham once remarked, "The British don't like music, they only like the noise it makes."
I believe you are right about the signature tune to 'Sutherland's Law' though. Trying to remember the name of the actor it the leading role.

And a very fine noise this makes as well. 'Technically flawed' ? I don't know but they seem very assured pieces within the late 19th Century idiom.

You may know the other overture-concert pieces he wrote. Two others are on an excellent Hyperion CD. But whilst musically interesting and strongly melodic, they are of a type. They are firmly in the sonata-allegro form, which gives rise to their often repeated melody and rhythmic power.

Iain Cuthbertson.

As the procurator fiscal in Sutherland's Law. It's taken half the day for me to remember that title. Now all I have to do uis remember the name of the author of the book spun off from the series and I can find the book.

I do not have the musical knowledge to comment whether the piece is technically flawed or not. I merely made the suggestion as a possible explaination of why it is not as popular as I think it should be. I am probably the person Sir Thomas had in mind when he made his comment!

I doubt it ; the ears are the most reliable gauge of whether music is good or not. You're spot-on. It's a very fine concert piece and deserves a wider audience.

MacCunn is one of many neglected composers in Britain. But his creativity did seem to tail off quite markedly after 1900.

The way this country is going with all this PC bollocks and the like, I would have thought 'Stranger in a Strange Land' is pretty apt

The Scots seem to have a wide range of excellent choices that would make an appropriate National Anthem. I do wonder what possessed them to make the awful choice they did. Possibly the best choice would be the final few minutes of the last movement of the No 3 Scottish Symphony by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847). It is superb.