Published in Gramophone magazine, October 2009. Read the review at the Gramophone archive.
"A kind of symphonic poem, inspired by descriptions of the African landscape.
"Although primarily associated with music for film and television, John Hardy has produced a significant number of orchestral, instrumental and stage works, including - since moving to Wales in the 1980s - two successful chamber operas for Music Theatre Wales. A BBC National Orchestra of Wales commission, Blue Letters from Tanganyika, composed in 1997, is a symphonic poem of sorts. Its four movements are based on letters written by Hardy's mother in the 1950s, when she spent time working with missionary schools in Tanzania.
"This may not be film music but the visual impact is still prominent because Hardy projects descriptions of the African landscape contained in his mother's letters onto a sonic landscape. He portrays these images very effectively on the whole. The rhythmically charged, open and immediately engaging music is bright and colourful while still managing to evoke the African landscape through subtle use of pentatonic patterns and interlocking rhythms.
"Indeed, freed from the visual straitjacket of film, Hardy appears to revel in the opportunity to give full reign to his musical persona, employing a large orchestra with insouciance throughout many sections of the work. Although such moments of textural density and activity become oversaturated at times (not helped, it has to be aid by an over-dynamic live recording), the serene, static and most obviously filmic third movement, "Twilight on the Lake", provides effective contrast and relief, evoking as it does the "little noises of the lake, the trees, and all the thousands of little creatures"."
Pwyll Ap Siôn
