Denis Griffiths

Denis Griffiths (1922–2001) was a Welsh operatic tenor who regularly performed on BBC radio from the late 1940s onwards and who later featured among the soloists in the Independent Television series Gwlad y Gan which - as Land of Song - was networked to a wide audience throughout the country between 1958 and 1964.

They sold very well and proved the first "big hit" for Wallich's fledgling Delysé label, reaching number 13 in the popular music charts of 1961.

The new Chorus, conducted by Arwel Hughes, was established to complement the BBC Welsh Orchestra which was reformed after the war, in 1946, at the instigation of Sir Adrian Boult.

Both were cornerstones of the BBC's renewed commitment in the post-war years to the encouragement and promotion of sung excellence through its broadcasts to Wales and the UK.

He performed live broadcast recitals of light songs and favourite numbers from the shows, together with work by contemporary Welsh composers such as Mansel Thomas and Idris Lewis himself.

Outside of the BBC, Denis Griffiths was a long-standing member of the Cardiff Bach Choir (founded in 1962 by Clifford Bunford) and over many years sang tenor solos in the choir's presentations of the great oratorio works by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Stainer, Fauré and others in halls and churches throughout South Wales and in concerts given at Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff.

Aside from his singing, he remained a skilled professional engineer, a maker of precision instruments, and throughout his musical career worked full-time for the NHS, becoming Chief Medical Physics Technician at Velindre Hospital in Whitchurch, Cardiff, where he fashioned a number of ground-breaking technical solutions to aid hospital and medical procedures.