Leading Welsh composer Gareth Glyn at 75 celebrated with new release on Tŷ Cerdd Records

All the Hours We Saw and other works brings together vocal and instrumental works written across the composer’s career. 

The album takes in five significant works from Gareth Glyn’s output, two of which set texts by prominent Welsh poet and novelist T Glynne Davies, Glyn’s own father – the centenary of whose birth is also marked in 2026. 

The album's central work is the song cycle Yr Oriau Oll a Welsom (All the Hours We Saw), setting T Glynne Davies’s poetry, and performed by prominent baritone Steffan Lloyd Owen, alongside beloved Welsh pianist Annette Bryn Parri, shortly before her death in 2025.  

Another T Glynne Davies setting, Cân Herod, is more pertinent than ever, with its powerful warnings for the future stability of the world order. Steffan Lloyd Owen performs alongside players from Ensemble Cymru. 

The two solo piano works and the suite for chamber ensemble that make up the album display a broad stylistic range: from the accessible immediacy of Pianimals, performed here by the fondly remembered composer Mervyn Burtch in a recently unearthed Tŷ Cerdd recording; to the technical challenge of Caniad y Gloch (The Sounding Bell), handled with dazzling technique and insightful sensitivity by Christopher Williams; and the charming accessibility of Anglesey Seascapes, celebrating the natural beauty of the composer’s home, and performed here by Ensemble Cymru.  

Gareth Glyn said: “I’m indebted to Tŷ Cerdd Records for bringing out this album in a year which is such a significant one for me: the year not only of my 75th birthday but also of my father’s centenary. Over a period of close to 60 years I set a great deal of his poetry to music – not because he was my father, but rather because I’ve always been affected and inspired by his poems.  They have a remarkable emotionally-driven muscularity – none more so perhaps than the one chosen as the opening song on this album, with its terrifying closing peroration. I’m immensely grateful to all the artists who contributed their stellar talents to this album, and also to Catrin Finch, whose performance of my second harp concerto (Vita Davidis) will be released by Tŷ Cerdd records in May.” 

TCR058: Gareth Glyn – Yr Oriau a Welsom (All the Hours We Saw) and other works is released on Tŷ Cerdd Records, available to stream and download on all major platforms. 

Release date: 30 January 2026 

LISTEN HERE 

Track list (total time: 54:51) 

1  Cân Herod (Herod’s Song) 4:34 

 Steffan Lloyd Owen (bariton/baritone), Ensemble Cymru 

2  Caniad y Gloch (The Sounding Bell) 13:05  

Christopher Williams (piano)  

Morluniau Môn (Anglesey Seascapes)   

3  Llanddwyn 2:16  

4  Cemaes 2:19  

5  Moelfre 4:26  

Ensemble Cymru  

Yr Oriau Oll a Welsom (All the Hours we Saw)  

6  Prolog (Prologue) 0:45  

7  Seithug (Futile) 3:22  

8  Crafangau (Talons) 3:50  

9  Y Weddw (The Widow) 2:34  

10  Yr Eryr (The Eagle) 2:13 

11  Tic Toc (Tick Tock) 0:48 

12  Amser (Time) 1:25 

13  Meibion y Rhyfel (Sons of the War) 2:03 

14  Y Cofio (Recalling) 3:47  

Steffan Lloyd Owen (bariton/baritone), Annette Bryn Parri (piano) 

Pianimals (Pianifeiliaid) 

15  Polar Bear (Arth Wen) 1:40  

16  Crow (Brân) 3:47  

17  Zebra (Sebra) 1:57 

Mervyn Burtch (piano) 

Biographies 

Gareth Glyn was born in Machynlleth, mid-Wales, in 1951, but moved in 1978 to Anglesey, which, through its landscapes, history and mythology, is a significant influence on his composing. His instrumental compositions include his Symffoni (BBC National Orchestra of Wales, 1991), the harp concertos Vita Davidis (Catrin Finch, 2017) and Amaterasu (Hannah Stone, 2015), and the symphonic poems Enduring City (North Carolina Symphony, 2010), Eryri (Ulster Orchestra, 1980) and Mametz Wood (Orchestra of the Welsh National Opera, 2016). He is in great demand as a composer for the voice, from staple of male choir repertoire, Heriwn, Wynebwn y Wawr (The Future’s Beginning Today, 1998) to the tenor solo Llanrwst (1988, commercially recorded by at least ten different singers) and a number of song-cycles. Of his three operas – Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd (A Week in a Future Wales, 2017), Peth Bach ’di Cawr (A Giant’s a Small Matter, 2023) and Tanau’r Lloer (Fires of the Moon, 2024) – the first was judged Best Touring Production in the Welsh Language in the Wales Theatre Awards 2018, and his third was produced as a film, with the world premiere showing in the Edinburgh International Film Festival in August 2025. 

Gareth Glyn’s website 

Steffan Lloyd Owen, baritone, is the winner of the 2025 Paris Opera Competition and the 2025 Joseph Palet Competition. He is currently a member of the International Opera Studio at Zürich Opera. Full biography here       

Annette Bryn Parri, piano, accompanied many of Wales’s leading singers including Bryn Terfel, Aled Jones, Gwyn Hughes-Jones and Rebecca Evans. She won numerous awards, including the Grace Williams Medal for composition at the Urdd Eisteddfod in 1982 and the Blue Riband for instrumentalists at the Rhyl National Eisteddfod in 1985. From 1993 she accompanied the choirs of Ysgol Glanaethwy. She was also half of the piano-and-harp duo Piantel, with Dylan Cernyw, and was a talented composer for the piano. She died at the age of 62 in May 2025.  

Christopher Williams enjoys a multifaceted career as a pianist, composer, conductor, teacher, and arranger. He teaches at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and Cardiff University School of Music, and serves as assistant director of the BBC National Chorus of Wales and pianist for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Renowned for both solo and collaborative performances, Williams has recorded extensively, to international acclaim.  Full biography here 

Ensemble Cymru is a chamber music group based in Bangor, North Wales. Highlights over the group’s 25 years include Royal Philharmonic Society Awards shortlist; Arts & Business Cymru Award; Welsh-language production of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf for S4C; and the premiere of Gareth Glyn’s opera Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd, produced by OPRA Cymru.  Full biography here  

Mervyn Burtch (1929-2015) was born in the Rhymney Valley, where he studied in Lewis School, Pengam, with David Wynne. In 1979 he joined the composition staff at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Burtch produced at least 650 works written for professional and amateur musicians, but perhaps he was best known for the large number of operas he wrote for performance by children and young people, working with Mark Morris. His large output includes chamber music, songs, orchestral works, music for choirs, community groups and brass bands.