Blue Letters from Tanganyika

A kind of symphonic poem, inspired by descriptions of the African landscape.... Hardy projects descriptions of the African landscape contained in his mother's letters onto a sonic landscape... 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... 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.' --Gramophone Magazine (Pwyll Ap Siôn)

Four colourful, finely crafted movements that will appeal to a wide age range. --Classical Music Magazine (Phil Sommerick)

Colorful, filmic, and open to pleasurable listening at a single sitting. --Music & Vision (Howard Smith)

Blue Letters from Tanganyika is a bright, energetic piece inspired by the adventures of a young woman travelling in East Africa: John Hardy'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 many times, with several broadcasts 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.

John Hardy's work spans the musical range from opera, choral and orchestral pieces to site-specific theatre events and film, yet is always powerful, expressive and meaningful, described as 'utterly engrossing' by the Guardian and 'gripping and intensely theatrical' by Opera Now.