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It has been well said that Hoddinott's music of this period, including the Variants and Symphonies 2-5, which span what may be called his middle period (1962-73), have a 'nocturnal intensity and dense chromatic colouring', which brings 'a distinctive edge to this music which marks it out from anything previously composed in Wales (or in the rest of Britain)'. Landscapes (1975) was one of those works inspired by Welsh folklore (albeit not inhabited by Welsh folk music as such) inspired by Eryri, a poem evoking Snowdonia by T H Parry-Williams.

Though he disliked the term, Hoddinott was famously prolific -- his friend the conductor Sir Charles Groves once likened him to Haydn; the analogy, not least in terms of sheer craftsmanship, was a fitting one. As another sympathetic friend, advocate and long-time colleague Geraint Lewis points out (The Guardian, 14 March 2008), 'he was legendary for his capacity to compose at full stretch to tight deadlines, and his vast and versatile catalogue runs to nearly three hundred individual works, which include six operas, ten symphonies and over twenty concertos.'

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