Welsh noir hits home... and beyond

Welsh noir series Hinterland (Y Gwyll in Welsh) has been making waves across its homeland, throughout the UK on BBC 4 and internationally on Netflix.

As the second series is launched, composer John Hardy reflects on writing the music for series one:

"The creators and producers of the programme talk about Hinterland as a place that's in their mind and their imagination. It's kind of a fictitious place but you still have to make that, you have to populate it with believable characters and atmospheres to convince an audience. And we try to make music that helps to define what that place is. It's all very inspiring when it is that visually rich, when the pictures are that strong and the sense of lace and mood is that beautiful and that powerful, it really helps to come up with interesting ideas for the sound."

Celebrating Patagonia 150

We're joining the celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of Welsh settlement in Argentina, in Patagonia. As a young label, one of our key early releases was Celtica Latina by TV star, singer and songwriter René Griffiths, who was born of Welsh ancestors in Patagonia.

In Celtica Latina, Griffiths combined his musical backgrounds, inspirations and languages from Wales and South America. Featuring on BBC Radio 3 Late Junction and BBC World Service World of Music, the album helped Griffiths cement his name as the quintessential Welsh-Patagonian musician.

"The music style is a Patagonian hybrid of Latin Argentine rhythms with Celtic traditional melodies. The CD includes some well-known traditional songs, along with original compositions written by Griffiths, which demonstrate a rich poetic vocabulary in Spanish and Welsh."
Western Mail

"Welsh traditional music cross-fertilised with Argentine rhythms... his music reflects his twin cultural heritage"
BBC Radio 3 Late Junction

Read more about Griffiths' life in his autobiography, Ramblings of a Patagonian.

The Wild East Africa of the 50's

John Hardy's Blue Letters from Tanganyika is a bright, energetic piece inspired by the adventures of a young woman travelling in East Africa: John's mother.

During nearly 2 years spent overseeing schools in an area of Tanzania the size of England, she wrote over 70 letters home describing wild animal encounters, exotic landscapes and countless tales of danger, bravery and the ‘everyday life’ of a totally unfamiliar environment.

Forty years after her return, her son John Hardy was commissioned by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales to write this piece, which they performed at 5 concerts and broadcast several times on BBC Radio 3.

Full of exuberant African colours, this beautiful recording by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Grant Llewellyn captures an exotic world of sweltering wild terrain, dangerous journeys through lion country and the calm of twilight over the great lake.

"The rhythmically charged, open and immediately engaging music is bright and colourful while still managing to evoke the African landscape"
Pwyll ap Siôn, Gramophone Magazine

"Powerfully cinematic"
Gavin Allen, South Wales Echo

4 stars **** "Four colourful, finely crafted movements"
Phil Sommerich, Classical Music Magazine

'masterpiece of creation... an extraordinary piece of history'
Roy Noble, BBC Radio Wales

"Colourful, filmic, and open to pleasurable listening at a single sitting"
Howard Smith, Music & Vision

"The tears fell with the pleasure of hearing it again"
audience member