The power of the classics to catch the imagination of a wider public is repeatedly demonstrated by the success of adaptations, whether the focus falls on Jane Austen on film, Mrs Gaskell on television (the popularity of Cranford on British television last year was a total surprise) or on Paradise Lost broadcast by BBC radio. Suddenly, a path appears that leads thousands back to the original words of the author.
Last year this was true of Persuasion in the US, where PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre brought Austen again to the fore, and awakened fresh interest in Juliet Stevenson’s unabridged recording.
And over the Christmas/New Year just gone, the brave BBC Radio 3 decision to broadcast Anton Lesser’s peerless unabridged Naxos AudioBooks recording of Paradise Lost – the 12 Books over 12 days – threw a sharp spotlight on ‘the greatest epic poem in the English language’. Frankly, it was difficult to keep it in stock…
There is no doubt that Paradise Lost is a difficult poem. We recorded the 3 CD abridgement in 1994 – one of the launch titles in our very first season – and it has been one of our best-sellers ever since. People clearly wanted to get to grips with it and many found Anton’s performance mesmeric.
And, some ten years later, Anton and I went back into the studio to record it in its full glory. It was one of the most remarkable weeks in a decade of recording audiobooks. Anton prepares meticulously but questions and options inevitably arose as he read it with the green light on: what is the heart of this line? should we go with the metre in the pronunciation of this particular word? or would that, in our contemporary context, interrupt the flow of the meaning? After all, this is an audio book.
To be honest, when I tuned in to the radio (odd really, as I have the CD set sitting on my shelves!) I found myself choosing to listen through internet radio, so I could simultaneously read the words on screen… and I know that many people did the same, following Anton’s reading, or with an old battered paperback copy (or fine leather-bound heirloom) in hand.
All the way to the deeply moving close.
And just as we want to have – we should have – a print copy of our favourite classics on a shelf within easy reach, I think we can now see how enriching it is to have our very own recordings of them as well…
So though a correspondent to the Daily Telegraph, one of Britain’s leading broadsheet newspapers.
On the morning of the broadcast of the final Book, the letters pages carried the following:
Daily Telegraph
2 January 2008Sir -
If they haven’t heard it already, I implore readers to ‘Listen Again’ to Anton Lesser’s evening readings of Paradise Lost on Radio 3.
It is the most extraordinary artistic achievement imaginable by one person, combining all the essentials – clarity, musicality, timing, judgement, character realisation, unflagging energy and perfect communication of those everlasting, sinuous, overlapping phrases.
Above all, it sustains a spine-chilling immediacy of vision which seems to travel from the poet’s mind to the listener’s ear like forked lightning.Jilly Spencer,
Colyton Devon
I certainly couldn’t have put it better myself!
I spend many more hours listening to audiobooks and radio than I do watching television. This may be obvious, given my professional life running Naxos AudioBooks. But for me, it is a voyage of enrichment, not just diversion. Actually, I came home from London last night enjoying a BBC Radio play a friend had written – about a Scottish psychic detective – which was good fun. Don’t imagine it is always improving classics for me!
But as well as recording books on subjects I know about, every year brings an unexpected discovery. I am English, and I think that for the most of us (apologies, apologies!) Abraham Lincoln is a figure in history. American history. But listening to our new collection of biography, speeches and letters, I have become much more aware that he was a giant in world history, a man of immense determination, integrity and courage. I would almost say that of all the 50–60 new titles we will release in 2009, it is the one that you ought to listen to… to give perspective, vigour and hope to our lives in the twenty-first century, as he did to the nineteenth.
I can tell you, we have some real delights coming. You can rejoice in The Life and Works of Joseph Haydn in Jeremy Siepmann’s affectionate audiobiography (March); Don’t miss the fun of The Marvelous Land of Oz (the first of many sequels to The Wizard of Oz) read by Liza Ross (February); more great Dickens novels are coming, and more Great Poets (including, yes! yes! William McGonagall. With bagpipes); and we celebrate a certain detective…
Stay tuned!
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Tags: blog.naxos.com, Cranford, Joseph Haydn, NaxosAudiobooks, Persuasion
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