NAXOS AUDIOBOOKS AT THE SUNDAY TIMES OXFORD LITERARY FESTIVAL

The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival, a week-long literary banquet held at various venues in the city, but centred on Christ Church, is one of the leading events of its kind in the UK. Eminent authors of a wide range of fiction, non-fiction, adult and children’s literature give talks, discuss topics and are generally around.

Naxos AudioBooks gave four presentations at this year’s event, highlighting particular aspects of its catalogue, three of them in the elegantly musty environs of the Upper Library, with late afternoon sun streaming in through the end window. These three talks – on James Joyce’s Women, Shakespearean performance and John Milton’s effect on the English language – drew rapt audiences; while the final presentation on classic children’s literature was held in the more informal environment of the Marquee in the Meadows.

If you missed the talks, or if you would like to hear them again, here they are!

Click on the links below to listen to/download the files. Alternatively, control-click (Mac), or right-click (PC) on a link, and choose ‘Save linked file as...’ to save the file to your computer.

James Joyce’s Women
Roger Marsh, director of Naxos AudioBooks James Joyce recordings introduces Ulysses and Finnegans Wake with particular emphasis on Molly Bloom and Anna Livia Plurabelle. With stunning readings by Marcella Riordan.

Listen/download: James Joyce’s Women (MP3, 58 mins, 20.2 MB)

Speak the Speech...
David Timson, director of four Naxos AudioBooks Shakespeare recordings and author of Shakespeare Stories, surveys the changing styles of Shakespeare performance through recordings starting with Henry Irving in the 1890s through to Kenneth Branagh in the twenty-first century.

Listen/download: Speak the Speech... (MP3, 58 mins, 20 MB)
Accompanying notes (PDF, 120 KB)

John Milton and his English Language
John Carey, Emeritus Merton Professor of English Literature in Oxford University, looks at John Milton and his use of the English Language through the main works, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, Lycidas, Comus and Samson Agonistes. With exceptional readings from the works by Anton Lesser.

Listen/download: John Milton and his English Language (MP3, 18.1 MB)

When The Magic Began
Nicolette Jones, childrens’ book reviewer for The Sunday Times, discusses classic children’s literature, why it endures in a time of Philip Pullman and J. K. Rowling,and introduces some of her favourites through lively and entertaining readings by Teresa Gallagher and Anton Lesser.

Listen/download: When The Magic Began (MP3, 14.8 MB)

The Gathering

By Nicolas Soames
1 Mar 2008

We were all excited when the possibility of recording Anne Enright’s Man Booker Prize winner The Gathering emerged, with the help of Julian Batson (of Oakhill Publishing – the NAB library supplier).

All authors will tell you that it is difficult for them to know who should read their novel, for the author inevitably hears the words already. This is especially true of Anne Enright, who was, for many years, a radio producer and therefore accustomed to working with the spoken word.

Surprisingly, she knew exactly who she wanted to read The Gathering – Fiona Shaw! Fortunately, with Macbeth and a wonderful recording of Lewis Carroll’s Alice novels for Naxos AudioBooks behind her, Fiona was only too pleased to pick up the challenge – especially as she had a few weeks’ break from her world tour in the National Theatre production of Beckett’s Happy Days.

Fiona was finishing in the States when we contacted her, and she bought the novel and read it on the plane. She was totally absorbed by the lively, imaginative writing, as well as stirred by the intensity of the family story, and looked forward to getting into the studio.

So did Anne, who flew over especially for the occasion.

Now, most recordings happen as planned. The actor meets the producer in the studio, and off they go! But sometimes it doesn’t happen quite like this, and sometimes unplanned interruptions happen at the worst time – when the author is present!

Our normal studio in north London was full and couldn’t make space, so we went into another studio which we have used successfully before. Fiona settled in and we did the normal sound check. Her main concern, she admitted, was how her natural Cork accent would sound to Anne, who was due about an hour later – after all, The Gathering is very clearly about a Dublin family, and Dubliners have a very different way of speaking to natives of Cork.

She need not have worried. When Anne arrived, she settled into the control room and listened with pleasure as her prize-winning novel came to life. As an experienced radio producer (as well as the author!), she was able to contribute meaningfully to the proceedings, rather than intruding.

But then came the steel pipes. Opposite the studio was a building site. And on that very day, they were taking a delivery of ten-metre steel pipes. At about 11.30, everything started going. Long lorries arrived with pipes and men; cranes swung round with great steel manacles which clanged on to the pipes and lifted two or three, jangling, into the air.

Cacophony.

The men called, a cement lorry with an exhaust issue trundled down the mews – and so it went on. An edginess entered the studio. Great things were happening, only to be undermined by the interference.

After a morning of this, which was long enough for author and reader to exchange ideas and come to a harmonious understanding, we gave up.

We started again the following day in our normal studio, Motivation Sound, which had now miraculously cleared its decks.

The curious thing was that neither Fiona nor I minded going through those opening pages again. It is the sign of a well-written book, of course. But it was highlighted by the number of times that Fiona would read something and stop, as she turned a page, and comment: ‘that was a Man Booker Prize-winning sentence!’

We felt a particular satisfaction because this was an unabridged reading. It is sometimes necessary to abridge for audiobook: occasionally because the novel is just too big to do commercially, and sometimes because some listeners do not want to be faced with twenty or more hours.

But The Gathering, while certainly substantial, is not very long at seven and three-quarter hours unabridged.

And in the voice of Fiona Shaw, there is an extra dimension.

Nicolas Soames

On the Road

By Nicolas Soames
2 Feb 2008

I live in Welwyn, a pretty village in Hertfordshire. My home is very close to the Naxos AudioBooks office – too close even for an audiobook fix in the morning. (I am repeatedly told I shouldn’t be in the car in the first place... that my legs would serve!)

So, although I am kitted out with an in-car iPod transmitter, I don’t often have the chance to use it. I spend more time listening to audiobooks (both NAB’s and my colleagues’) when going into London on the train, or even walking in the countryside.

But the other day I drove to Birmingham, which takes a couple of hours (or a bit more with one stop). I kitted myself out for the drive. I knew I would listen for a while to BBC Radio 3, which was reviewing The A–Z of Conductors, an amazing new Naxos release written and compiled by David Patmore. Actually the programme, CD Review, spent over forty minutes on it, interviewing David and the English National Opera conductor Edward Gardiner, and generally – generously – giving it the thumbs-up. It is a box set with a 250,000-word booklet surveying the careers of 300 conductors, four CDs of key music tracks, and an unbelievable website with hundreds of hours of free streamed music, showcasing the work of many of those conductors so that listeners can make their own judgements. A milestone release.

Before that, I slipped in the first CD of one of our latest releases, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (unabridged), read by Glenn McCready with an easy informality disguising real skill – you will hear more of him on NAB.

The road was still unfolding, and somewhere north of Coventry I decided I had better move on, and slipped in an MP3 listening copy of the ’final edit’ of Neville Jason (he of War and Peace and Proust fame) reading the abridged version (aimed at a junior audience) of The Sword in the Stone. Actually, this is not due for release until later this year, but it has been pre-empted by the first installment of the unabridged recording of T. H. White’s masterpiece The Once and Future King. There is no music with the unabridged recording of The Sword in the Stone (eight CDs, just out), but there is with the abridged version (three CDs, to be released in June).

Then came Radio 3.

And then it was iPod time. I am currently listening to The History of India by Michael Wood (rich and interesting) on BBC AudioBooks, read by Sam Dastor, who does a very good line in authentic pronunciation. I plugged the transmitter into the lighter power socket, slipped in my iPod, and off it went.

When I first got the transmitter I was hooked. At last, I would be able to move from iPod at home to iPod on the train to iPod in the car seamlessly, never losing my place in the story. But I do recognise that this method has some serious limitations.

First of all, there is the sound quality. The basic sound from the transmitter is not very good. It is as simple as that. I certainly find it an unacceptable compromise when I want to play music. Very poor. So, although I have a nice range of my personal delights – from David Bowie to the St Matthew Passion to Music for Two Cellos played by NAB editor Sarah Butcher (an unashamed plug) – I don’t listen to them in the car.

Then there is the interference from the packed airwaves in the UK. Only too often, I have to change frequency. This is both annoying and– at seventy miles per hour – dangerous, even though actually it only involves pressing a couple of buttons.

I also find that if I want to change tracks or move to a new playing choice, it is again a dangerous manoeuvre, because the transmitter in the lighter socket is situated rather low in my BMW – as with most cars, I suspect. I confess I have swerved a couple of times to adjust direction...

SO – it is time to ditch the transmitter and get a new radio, with a direct iPod input, so I can work it all from the car radio. I have felt some resistance to upgrading the hardware when my radio works perfectly, so I have delayed the change – but for many reasons (including safety’s sake!), it has to come!

By the way, I came home with more of The Sword in the Stone, a gem in the Arthurian canon which started, really, with Le Morte d’Arthur (The Death of Arthur) by Sir Thomas Malory, and from which T. H. White took the overall title of his epic.

Nicolas Soames

A Jane Austen Month – Again!

By Nicolas Soames
1 Jan 2008

The appetite for film and TV adaptations of the classics continues unabated. Neither Jane Austen nor Charles Dickens would be nearly as popular in the twenty-first century were it not for some truly memorable performances on the big and small screens.

As proof, just a few years after Emma Thompson’s intelligent and faithful re-working of Sense and Sensibility, for the director Ang Lee’s venture into English literature, here is Andrew Davis’s reworking for BBC TV: though whether Thompson’s wonderfully sensitive portrayal of Elinor can be truly matched remains to be seen.

This constant reworking of the classics demonstrates a public appetite which cannot be denied, encouraging producers to cast a wider net. It has been heartening in recent years to tread not only the highways – such as the pops from Austen and Dickens (Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend), the Brontës (and more than just Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre!) and Thackeray (Vanity Fair) – but also the byways, such as Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, which proved an indubitable hit.

Purists can rail against the way they are done (blatantly luscious kisses in Jane Austen... even a sex scene!; contraction of events from the Cranford novels etc.). But more often than not the period, the sensibility and the point of the works are retained. This was certainly true of last year’s delicious Fanny Hill, though for me A Cock and Bull Story, the reworking of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, surely gets the prize for the most imaginative screen presentation of a wildly wacky novel.

And back we all (or many of us) go to the original...

This was true last year of Cranford, which previously registered low on the classics scale. The Naxos AudioBooks unabridged recording by Clare Willie proved very popular (supported by a stream of outstanding reviews!) and the paperback publishers found themselves rapidly reprinting to keep up with the demand.

When it comes to audiobooks, the question often arises whether to go for the abridged version or the unabridged. Of course, the faithful throw up their hands in horror.

’My dear, I wouldn’t TOUCH an abridged version.’

In some cases, the decision is easy. Cranford runs for just eight hours unabridged, so we didn’t even consider doing it abridged.

But Bleak House read so affectingly by Sean Barrett and Teresa Gallagher runs for thirty-six hours unabridged – and that is a serious audiobook commitment. So many will prefer our (generous) abridgement, which runs for just over eleven hours.

Similarly, Great Expectations, read by Anton Lesser, runs for over eighteen hours unabridged, so we offer an alternative four-and-a-half hour version on four CDs.

And what about Sense and Sensibility? Well, the full version runs for just under fourteen hours. For many, the pairing of Jane Austen and Juliet Stevenson means fourteen totally absorbing hours. But others will prefer the three CD version, running for nearly four hours. They may also prefer the inclusion of classical music which makes these abridgements more of an atmospheric production, perhaps even closer to the TV adaptation. The main point, of course, is that you get the real words of Jane Austen – and (shock, horror!) you neither find any lubricious corners, nor do you miss them.

Of course, time is not the only factor. There is price as well...

For this month, we are offering the unabridged version of Sense and Sensibility for just £19.99 AND a free recording of a biography of Jane Austen.

Juliet Stevenson has had a close working relationship with the novels of Jane Austen, being a memorable Mrs Elton in the film version of Emma; but she is, perhaps, peerless when reading the original... Listen to her talking about her feelings and continuing respect for Austen in her podcast, and you will see why... and why fourteen hours of Sense and Sensibility is an unalloyed joy.

Nicolas Soames

The play’s the thing – you too can be Cyrano and Roxane and...

By Nicolas Soames
3 Dec 2007

5.15 p.m., Wednesday. Approaching post-work time. The afternoon had been fairly quiet in our offices in the English Hertfordshire village where Naxos AudioBooks HQ is situated. So Genevieve Helsby, who runs Naxos Books, and Caroline Waight, the latest arrival to the team, sat around my desk... and we read through a play.

We pulled off the shelves Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac in the Anthony Burgess translation, a gem of world drama with a curiously powerful emotional punch. It was given an international platform on film by the larger-than-life Gérard Depardieu; and recently, in New York, Kevin Kline gave, by all accounts, a mesmeric performance.

Cyrano de Bergerac has a large cast, so at first we chose our roles lightly. I used the privilege of my position and chose Cyrano, Genevieve was Roxane, Caroline Christian de Neuvillette and we agreed to share the rest – de Guiche, Le Bret, Ragueneau, the duenna and all the others as they came up.

That didn’t last long. Roxane doesn’t appear for some time and after a couple of grand speeches from me, Genevieve had had enough of silence and elbowed me out of Cyrano; I moved over to Carbon de Castel-jaloux and a cadet, and it wasn’t long before characters were batted from one reader to another.

It started as fun even if slightly self-conscious. Though we spend our working lives in the environs of the spoken word, stepping into the spotlight is a very different matter. It is thirteen years since Naxos AudioBooks recorded its first title (Virginia Woolf’s Orlando read by Laura Paton) and I have lost count of the hours I have spent in the studio. Genevieve, too, has produced audiobooks from Edith Nesbit to Wagner’s The Ring: An Introduction. And, when at school, Caroline produced an audiobook adaptation of The Lord of the Rings!

But here we were, actually at the business end even if no microphone was in sight.

And Cyrano de Bergerac, with its flamboyant French declamatory character sustained by Burgess, is no easy read. Here is a sample – in a visit to the theatre, Cyrano, swordsman and poet, ridicules the (over-the-top) pompous actor Montfleury:

CYRANO:   Stay in your stalls,
You vaccine marquises. Your mooing calls
My cane to rummage through your folderols.

SPECTATOR:   Continue, Montfleury.

CYRANO:   Discontinue, rather, unless he,
Unwilling to retire to sty or trough,
Needs disembowelling and his jowls cut off.
Off, off, you offal. Lug your guts away,
You mortadella. Very well, then – stay,
And I’ll remove you slice by slice.

(MONTFLEURY summons up the remains of his dignity.)

MONTFLEURY:   Monsieur, In insulting me you insult the Tragic Muse.

(There are some murmurs of agreement and admiration.)

CYRANO (equably):   If the Tragic Muse had the dubious honour, fat sir,
Of your acquaintance, she would not abuse
Her pious duty. Seeing the blubber ooze
Into your collar and your belly round as a clock,
She’d kick your buttocks with her tragic sock.

SPECTATOR (leading the pit):   Carry on, Montfleury – let’s hear the play.

CYRANO (kindly):   Consider my poor scabbard, please, I pray.
She loves my sword and wants my sword to stay
Inside her. Off that stage!

MONTFLEURY:   I, I –

Rapidly, the power of the drama took hold. We three, chopping and changing through the characters, saw the events unfold from a changing situation. One moment Genevieve understood Roxane’s love for the beautiful Christian de Neuvillette because Genevieve was reading Roxane; a little further on, we had swapped the roles and she was now Cyrano, and feeling his worldly understanding for the young, beautiful lovers overtaken by his passion, his urgency and his eloquence.

You may say you can get the same effect by reading the play silently to yourself or seeing a performance: you can empathise with each character’s situation. But it isn’t the same. Because it is very different experience actually speaking the words out loud. There is a sharper level of reality, of understanding, of participation.

The actor knows his expression is through body, speech and mind. It is his training. Those who have had good drama teachers at school will have an inkling of this, remembering when they were cajoled or coerced to take parts in a read-through of Shakespeare, for example. Of course, some people come naturally to performance, but most of us (myself included!) shuddered at the thought of having to perform. But what an enriching experience it proves to be.

And so was Cyrano de Bergerac in the Naxos AudioBooks office.

Of course, it is only for the office on a late Wednesday afternoon when the phones are mercifully quiet! We are privileged to work with some of the greatest actors in the world. Our experience makes us all the more appreciative of their remarkable talent. In her Christmas review round-up in The Times, Christina Hardyment’s favourite audiobook of 2007 was Bleak House read by the ‘mesmeric’ Sean Barrett and Teresa Gallagher remarkable for her ‘freshness and honesty’ as Esther Summerson.

And both Sean and Teresa have said to me (as so many others as well) that they love to read a big classic ‘because we get to play all the parts!’

So, listen and enjoy the wondrous talents of our readers, presenting the greatest classics.

But how about, one day over Christmas, persuade the family and friends to turn off the television, turn off the CD player or iPod or radio; then take a play – a Noël Coward, or Bernard Shaw, or Oscar Wilde, or a Chekhov, even a Shakespeare – and read it through. Even if there are only two of you!

It probably doesn’t matter what it is – something grand, funny, light or exciting; something old, something new.

So long as it has life, the performance doesn’t matter. The spoken word will bring the art alive.

It will be enriching, you will have fun, and you will appreciate the greatness of great actors all the more!

Nicolas Soames

Big novels, audiobooks and the north face of the Eiger

By Nicolas Soames
01 Nov 2007

Recording large novels unabridged is a massive undertaking. When we recorded War and Peace (which runs for 61 hours) with Neville Jason reading, we put aside twenty-one days for recording. It actually took about twenty-four, and then there were a few retakes as we re-considered interpretation and pronunciation.

Neville has never quantified the amount of time he spent in preparation – considering the characters, the tone of the narrative, the flow and pace of the whole book. And that is before the major task of preparing the reading! Many of the very finest readers read their books out loud first of all, before they get into the studio. Certainly David Timson did this with Our Mutual Friend (36 hours): he reckons he has read it out complete at least three times.

Their work is certainly appreciated. Neville received this a few days ago: ‘After listening to your absolutely lovely reading [of War and Peace] my admiration of Tolstoy must now be accompanied by a sense of happy wonder at the sensitivity you display and your beautiful voice. The characters come alive – you are a genius! I am now on my second round of listening.’

Another letter highlighted his recording of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (abridged, but still 45 hours!): ‘I was daunted by the book itself and never got closer to scaling its great height than the base camp of Volume One... but then I discovered it was possible to be whisked to the summit in deluxe comfort by means of your wonderful reading. I enjoyed every moment of the journey, and now that I understand the topography better, I have begun to make explorations of my own.’

Of course, there are some readers who are happier to take a more spontaneous run at a book. One famous reader (no names here...) never reads the last fifty pages until he is actually in front of the microphone in the studio, so that he feels he can inject the right note of surprise. I have always thought that a rather dangerous approach, because there could be a sting in the tail (‘...as he said in his strong Scottish accent – Yikes! The main character is Scottish!!!!).

And to be frank, sometimes the financial reward for actors ascending these verbal north-faces-of-the-Eiger is so small that the principal task becomes getting it out as fast as possible.

All this comes to me because I have been listening – for a change! – to another company’s recording. The work is Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, an account of an Australian who breaks out of a top security jail, flees to India and gets involved in the Bombay underworld. It is a massive book in size – 1,000 pages – and scope. Full of action, it has time for wonderfully vivid character portraits of Indian slum dwellers in Maharashtra, as well as Afghan mafia warlords, thugs, prostitutes, bodyguards, killers, and seductive but wayward women of all kinds. Its dialogue (reflecting the different nationalities) is right on the button. And it is also a snapshot of a time – when the Russians were fighting their Afghan war – which is particularly relevant to us today.

Roberts has done for Bombay what Lawrence Durrell did for Alexandria in The Alexandria Quartet, displaying a city in all its colours and smells, glory and underbelly.

And the reading, by the Australian actor Humphrey Bower, is as virtuosic as it could possibly be. He does a truly remarkable job. He has a strong presence as the main character, Lin, but also brings to life all the major and minor characters – be they an Indian taxi driver, a cocaine-addicted wastrel, a frightening Afghan torturer, a Palestinian gangster beset by nightmares or a whole range of women from a variety of countries, each with a distinctive character created by more than just the appropriate accent!

I have some personal experience of the slums of Maharashtra, and I can confirm that both Roberts and Bower have got the milieu, the people, the energy and the vocal sounds perfectly.

The recording runs for 41 hours, and I have been listening while in the gym, the car, walking down the road... and though it may appear odd for me to take your attention away from the wondrous classics we offer, I can only say that if you feel like sampling a roller-coaster which dips into metaphysics and some dodgy ethics from time to time but keeps you glued, completely glued, to your earphones, and you want to hear a master reader, and you want to see why the audiobook is such a transforming medium – one that has uplifted me for so many years – and why I wanted to start Naxos AudioBooks... then, apart from all the Naxos AudioBooks glories, I recommend Shantaram (Blackstone Audiobooks – an American company).

And my salutations go out to Humphrey Bower, a master of his craft.

Nicolas Soames

Some Plato or Nietzsche for this week’s commute, sir?

By Nicolas Soames
12 Nov 2007

Imagine! You are the Naxos AudioBooks sales rep and you turn up to see the Waterstone’s buyer or The White House Bookshop – that delightful establishment in Burnham Market, Norfolk – and you say, ‘Can I interest you in a four-CD set of Ancient Greek Philosophy or Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra or The Life and Works of Marcel Proust?’

You can almost hear the buyer thinking, ‘Hmm, I have limited space for audiobooks... shall I stock it with Proust or Plato, or shall I keep it for the next rep. who will offer me Agatha Christie or the new I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue?’

Probably, a no-brainer.

And certainly many of my audiobook colleagues remark how noble it is that we do such worthy things, but surely it doesn’t pay its way!

The answer is that we have been pleasantly surprised at the interest in the more academic areas of our catalogue. We don’t really know why this is, but I put it down largely to the fact that our listeners use the flexibility of the audiobook medium to learn on the move.

One of the great innovations of the twentieth century was the opportunity for adult learning – in the UK, it was provided by the Workers Educational Association (WEA) and the many adult courses run by universities, which broadened with the Open University and the concept of the University of the Third Age.

People genuinely want to broaden their cultural base, whether it is with philosophy or classical music, literature and/or the other arts. And now there is no such thing as ‘It is too late, I suppose’.

At Naxos AudioBooks we try to play our part also by providing recordings which can introduce topics – such as Philosophy or The Classics (scripts from OUP’s excellent ‘Very Short Introduction’ series); or The History of Classical Music, The History of English Literature and The History of Theatre (our own specially commissioned texts). Increasingly we are providing original source texts – from Plato, Nietzsche, the Buddha. And we present these with explanatory introductions to make them more accessible.

This has been successful partly through finding the right voices and writers for these subjects. Richard Fawkes (who wrote the History scripts on classical music, opera and the musical) and David Timson (author of The History of Theatre), for example, love their subjects and clearly convey their knowledge and passions.

Arguably, it is more difficult with Western classical philosophy, or Buddhism... but not so for the brothers Hugh and Tom Griffith, who are setting out the Greeks for us. They are academically sound Oxford classicists with a whimsical eye for concept and phrase, and the territory is divided quite naturally between them: it is Plato for Tom (his new translations of Symposium, etc., are widely admired) and Aristotle (coming in February 2008) for Hugh.

Over one Oxford Sunday lunch (we discussed life and projects from midday to 6 p.m., and pondered moving straight on to supper), I vaguely recall (there were a few bottles) trying to summarise the fraternal differences which led one to Plato and the other to Aristotle... until I was told in no uncertain terms, ‘Whoa, Tonto!’

The complete Loeb Classical Library may adorn their shelves, but there isn’t a spec of dust on it – or on them.

The same goes for Ian Johnston. A British-born Canadian retired lecturer, he has a remarkable website on which he has posted his excellent new translations of Greek and German texts, including those of Homer, Sophocles, Plato and Kafka. Also available are the scripts of interesting talks he has given to his students, introducing a range of subjects. An extremely generous man, he believes profoundly that our past so informs and enriches our present that philosophy and art should be more widely available.

Enthusiasm marks these men, as well as a deeply rooted love for their subjects and conviction of their relevance for today. Tom Griffith demonstrates that the measured wisdom of Socrates as he approaches his death (The Trial and Death of Socrates) is unforgettable; Hugh Griffith highlights the expected thread of dry humour in Diogenes, one of the earliest Greek philosophers, in Ancient Greek Philosophy; the glorious wit and insight of Mozart is persuasively transmitted by Jeremy Siepmann in The Life and Works of Mozart (part of his exceptional audiobook series on great composers); and in The History of Theatre David Timson draws the whole picture, from Sophocles through the remarkable virtuosity of Shakespeare to the present day.

What journeys! What discoveries! So, back we go to our opening image: The Naxos AudioBooks Sales Representative and The Book Buyer. It sounds like the title for one of Aesop’s fables, and in a way it is.

‘Can I interest you in our new recording introducing the works of Aristotle, or perhaps The Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path?... Would you like to think about it?’

Nicolas Soames

Big novels, audiobooks and the north face of the Eiger

By Nicolas Soames
01 Nov 2007

Recording large novels unabridged is a massive undertaking. When we recorded War and Peace (which runs for 61 hours) with Neville Jason reading, we put aside twenty-one days for recording. It actually took about twenty-four, and then there were a few retakes as we re-considered interpretation and pronunciation.

Neville has never quantified the amount of time he spent in preparation – considering the characters, the tone of the narrative, the flow and pace of the whole book. And that is before the major task of preparing the reading! Many of the very finest readers read their books out loud first of all, before they get into the studio. Certainly David Timson did this with Our Mutual Friend (36 hours): he reckons he has read it out complete at least three times.

Their work is certainly appreciated. Neville received this a few days ago: ‘After listening to your absolutely lovely reading [of War and Peace] my admiration of Tolstoy must now be accompanied by a sense of happy wonder at the sensitivity you display and your beautiful voice. The characters come alive – you are a genius! I am now on my second round of listening.’

Another letter highlighted his recording of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (abridged, but still 45 hours!): ‘I was daunted by the book itself and never got closer to scaling its great height than the base camp of Volume One... but then I discovered it was possible to be whisked to the summit in deluxe comfort by means of your wonderful reading. I enjoyed every moment of the journey, and now that I understand the topography better, I have begun to make explorations of my own.’

Of course, there are some readers who are happier to take a more spontaneous run at a book. One famous reader (no names here...) never reads the last fifty pages until he is actually in front of the microphone in the studio, so that he feels he can inject the right note of surprise. I have always thought that a rather dangerous approach, because there could be a sting in the tail (‘...as he said in his strong Scottish accent – Yikes! The main character is Scottish!!!!).

And to be frank, sometimes the financial reward for actors ascending these verbal north-faces-of-the-Eiger is so small that the principal task becomes getting it out as fast as possible.

All this comes to me because I have been listening – for a change! – to another company’s recording. The work is Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, an account of an Australian who breaks out of a top security jail, flees to India and gets involved in the Bombay underworld. It is a massive book in size – 1,000 pages – and scope. Full of action, it has time for wonderfully vivid character portraits of Indian slum dwellers in Maharashtra, as well as Afghan mafia warlords, thugs, prostitutes, bodyguards, killers, and seductive but wayward women of all kinds. Its dialogue (reflecting the different nationalities) is right on the button. And it is also a snapshot of a time – when the Russians were fighting their Afghan war – which is particularly relevant to us today.

Roberts has done for Bombay what Lawrence Durrell did for Alexandria in The Alexandria Quartet, displaying a city in all its colours and smells, glory and underbelly.

And the reading, by the Australian actor Humphrey Bower, is as virtuosic as it could possibly be. He does a truly remarkable job. He has a strong presence as the main character, Lin, but also brings to life all the major and minor characters – be they an Indian taxi driver, a cocaine-addicted wastrel, a frightening Afghan torturer, a Palestinian gangster beset by nightmares or a whole range of women from a variety of countries, each with a distinctive character created by more than just the appropriate accent!

I have some personal experience of the slums of Maharashtra, and I can confirm that both Roberts and Bower have got the milieu, the people, the energy and the vocal sounds perfectly.

The recording runs for 41 hours, and I have been listening while in the gym, the car, walking down the road... and though it may appear odd for me to take your attention away from the wondrous classics we offer, I can only say that if you feel like sampling a roller-coaster which dips into metaphysics and some dodgy ethics from time to time but keeps you glued, completely glued, to your earphones, and you want to hear a master reader, and you want to see why the audiobook is such a transforming medium – one that has uplifted me for so many years – and why I wanted to start Naxos AudioBooks... then, apart from all the Naxos AudioBooks glories, I recommend Shantaram (Blackstone Audiobooks – an American company).

And my salutations go out to Humphrey Bower, a master of his craft.

Nicolas Soames

As You Like It... Kenneth Branagh... and Shakespeare...

By Nicolas Soames
01 Oct 2007

Kenneth Branagh’s deep commitment to Shakespeare continues. Though equally prolific as actor and director, he almost always has a film Shakespeare project on the go (Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost so far) – and when he hasn’t, he is itching to get something going, however small. Thus I got a phone call one morning, out of the blue, from his agent to say that ‘Ken’ had a free three days in two weeks’ time and would we like to record King Richard III?

‘Yes,’ I said. And within an hour I had booked studio, director (David Timson) and within three hours, most of the cast. Frenetic wasn’t the word for it.

But that’s what it is like around Branagh (people who work with him call him Ken, but if I do that here I will be regarded as a terrible poseur...so – I mean Ken, but chose Branagh). Doors open and things happen. I always wondered why that call came out of the blue. It was partly because, apparently, he had a conversation with Michael Sheen who kindly recommended us – as a company who can get things going. Then again, it probably wasn’t unconnected with the fact that Branagh wanted to make a come-back to the stage after 10 years, and eventually chose the role of Richard III (!) at the Sheffield Crucible. I saw it, of course, (directed by Michael Grandage, who took over the Donmar Theatre shortly afterwards) and I experienced my most chilling moment in theatre in all my life.

‘I am not in the giving mood today,’ says Richard III. I happened to be looking closely at Ken himself onstage at that very moment, and, I tell you, despite thirty years on the judo mat, I have rarely experienced such outright fear. Terrifying. And he wasn’t even saying it to me.

Anyway – this isn’t about terror but outright romance and love. The other day, I went (with David T and wives) to the first showing of Branagh’s new film of As You Like It. (It has been hanging around for more than a year waiting for a UK release by capricious distributors!). I exhort you to see it. It is set in Japan (slightly oddly, I have to say – and with varying effect, as the Forest of Arden, when we get to it, looks undeniably English to the roots!); and one of my former judo teachers, Syd Hoare 8th Dan who is also a sumo expert turns up as a sumo referee. How bizarre is the world!

BUT – the reason I recommend it is that the love scenes between Orlando (David Oyelowo) and Rosalind (Bryce Dallas Howard) are truly magical. As You Like It was acted with love and passion, and directed with the same emotions. It is so easy for a) filmed Shakespeare to go through the motions and b) for a director who has been doing Shakespeare films for years to pay lipservice to The Bard. But not in the hands of Branagh. Here is joyful, youthful passion and wonderment writ large on screen.

The cast is generally extremely fine. Kevin Kline is a thoughtful charismatic Jaques, Alfred Molina and Janet McTeer fizz as the comic pair Touchstone and Audrey. And Adrian Lester and Romola Garai duet as the other lovers, Oliver and Celia.

And Brian Blessed gives his best performance for years as both Dukes.

After the film showing, there was a question and answer with Branagh, Adrian Lester (a highly accomplished speaker we discovered) and Big Brian Blessed. Lots of interesting interaction with the audience, one of whom asked the interesting question why there were so many twins in the comedies – what was Shakespeare saying about families?

Of course, all three panelists were saying very nice things about each other...but we had a good glimpse of reality at the end. Big Brian, who didn’t need a microphone and just roared out his comments in the larger than life way at the Curzon Cinema, Mayfair, said what a sensitive director Ken was, and how well he knew Shakespeare and actors and filmmaking etc etc...But there came a point when the worm turned.

Branagh had asked Blessed to bring his acting down for the camera, and be aware how close the audience was in cinematic terms  – in such a different way to the stage. On Blessed’s own admission he wasn’t doing what was asked. Branagh put it a different way, and then tried again a few minutes later on a different tack.

‘Finally’, remembered Blessed, ‘he just yelled at me:

“BRIAN, WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE TO FXXXXING GET YOU TO KEEP YOUR FXXXXXING HEAD STILL?????”’

The penny dropped. And Brian was truly mesmeric.

And that is the way, sometimes, art happens.

Nicolas Soames

Watch the trailer for As You Like It (external site).

Introducing opera...

By Nicolas Soames
01 Sept 2007

Being part of the international classical music label Naxos, music is one of pillars of Naxos AudioBooks, and has been since its inception. We began with the platform of classical music with classic literature and it formed the distinct character of our abridged recordings: Beethoven Piano Trios with Jane Austen, lots of exciting late nineteenth century and early twentieth century chamber music with Sherlock Holmes, and Russian symphonic music with the great classics of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.

But it was the Naxos AudioBooks team that also produced the range of music audiobooks that are now under the Naxos Educational banner: principally two series, Life and Works of 11 composers (Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Verdi etc) and Opera Explained, 28 lively introductions to the major operas.

The Life and Works are available on 4 CD sets and as downloads and, written and read by Jeremy Siepmann, they remain fascinating and informative. I was a classical music journalist for 30 years, but I still found new things in them, and enjoyed the entertaining weave of words and music – with Jeremy skilfully highlighting just those pieces of music you really need to hear to round off a biography.

The Opera Explained is a 1 CD series mainly written by Thomson Smillie and read by David Timson – Carmen, The Barber of Seville, Così fan tutte, Madama Butterfly, etc.

The audiobook medium is the absolutely perfect medium for this: perfect preparation for going to see the opera. They are available on CD, but for their downloads you have to go to www.classicsonline.com, the new download site for classical music. All MP3 – a very good service.

I thought about all this because I have just had one of my most engaging audiobook experiences.

Stephen Johnson, who wrote the Naxos Books edition of Wagner: The Life and Music (a 300 page book with 30 pictures, 2 CDs, and a free website!), has just written and read the Opera Explained introduction to The Ring of the Nibelungs. It is a 2 CD set and it is totally absorbing. Have you ever wanted to get to grips with Wagner’s masterpiece, to understand the background, the story, the leitmotifs? Do you know it a bit but want to go deeper?

I have known the Ring for most of my life. In the (er...) 1960s, when Radio 3 would broadcast the latest production from Bayreuth, the family would stop and we would all gather around the radio and listen, often with the libretto. Just like those wartime illustrations – except that my father didn’t smoke a pipe. (He smoked cigars). I was barely into my teens, but it was a very special occasion. My mother, who was Hungarian, explained how she sat in her box in the Budapest Opera House with a torch and the libretto on her knee.

I went to the first Ring at Sadler’s Wells (I seem to remember) and thought that I knew it pretty well. So when surtitles came to Covent Garden I went to Das Rheingold with a vaguely superior air, convinced that I would never look at them because I wouldn’t need them. It turned out they were incredibly helpful, highlighting little things which made me realise why deep in the orchestra at that moment was a particular theme – such as when Brunnhilde tells Sieglinde that she is bearing a child and she will save her, there is a hint of the Siegfied theme!

NEVERTHELESS, when I listened to Stephen explaining and discussing the Ring, I remembered things I had forgotten and discovered things I never knew.

He says that you don’t really need to know all the leitmotifs, but he does pinpoint many of them, which is a great help.

So, I highly recommend it!

It isn’t released until October, but I have enjoyed it so much I couldn’t resist writing about it. And, because I have it in my office I can give you a special preview to listen to – it gives the flavour of it all.

For more, put a note in your diary for October, and rush to your music shop, or buy it from your online retailer – or even download it from www.classicsonline.com!

Nicolas Soames

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Marin Alsop, Copland, Naxos’s 20th Anniversary and more...

By Nicolas Soames
27 July 2007

I arrived back in the UK from Hong Kong the other day, went virtually straight into the office to catch up and, that evening, went to the Royal Albert Hall for the Prom concert. Marin Alsop was conducting Barber’s Violin Concerto (played by the Canadian violinist James Ehnes) and Copland’s Symphony No. 3 which I didn’t know at all. Spectacular. All traces of tiredness from the journey disappeared. The symphony includes the Fanfare for the Common Man which sounds so much better in a symphonic context than when abbreviated to herald a sports event.

Marin is known to Naxos AudioBooks listeners for her readings – The Story of Classical Music, Famous Composers (both mainly available in the United States) and More Famous Composers – but her day job (or more properly night job!) is principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and music director of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. A firebrand to watch on stage, she is relaxed and direct off-stage, and decidedly unpretentious.

Her introduction to the audiobooks wing of Naxos was in a barn. Really. I’d rather not go into details, but suffice to say she couldn’t come to London to record because she was working with the BSO in Poole. We received some bad advice about a suitable local speech studio and we found ourselves, in a barn with straw on the floor. The recording equipment wasn’t bad (except for a buzz...) and let’s just say that the studio itself was in the process of construction.

Marin was wonderfully unfazed. She didn’t complain or throw a wobbly. Just laid-back and patiently waited for me to sort it all out. At 7 p.m. at night. She is accustomed to working at night. So we went back to Poole, and rather fortunately I tracked down another studio, also on a farm – but the real McCoy...and the recording went ahead as planned. Marin proved herself as much a natural speaker in front of a microphone as she is when on the podium introducing her concerts, and The Story of Classical Music has been followed by the two programmes of composers’ lives.

Now you might think that anyone who can command a 100+ piece orchestra playing the Fanfare for the Common Man at full stretch, filling every nook and cranny of the Royal Albert Hall, wouldn’t have a problem with one microphone. But I can tell you recording an audiobook is a very different discipline. The single-voice mic. picks up every tiny trace of nerves, of blurred speech or an indecisive consonant. Speech recording is incredibly revealing of the personality behind the voice and there is only so much a skilful editor can do to snip out mouth clicks or an edginess. It sounds so easy but it isn’t.

But Marin saw herself as just there to tell the story of the music she loves, of the composers she respects and even reveres. And that is just what she did.

She is a consummate performer as one would expect from one of the leading figures on Naxos, the independent classical music label.

Of course, classical music is close to the heart of Naxos AudioBooks which sprang from Naxos. In just twenty years, Naxos has transformed classical music on CD. It was known mainly as a budget label for a long time; but as it celebrates its second decade, it is better know as the inexpensive label with the widest range of repertoire of any in the world. From Monteverdi to Peter Maxwell Davies.

Hong Kong is the headquarters of Naxos – that was why I was there – and the principal home of Klaus Heymann, the German-born businessman and classical music lover who started Naxos in 1987 more as a diversion than a serious commercial enterprise. It is a long and extraordinary story: from Eastern European orchestras playing classical pops by Vivaldi, Mozart and Beethoven to its current status as the most prolific and enterprising classical CD company. And not only does it lead in terms of the sheer breadth of the repertoire, it also has been the pioneer of classical music in the digital format.

Klaus Heymann realized early on that the internet and the digital medium would play a key role in the dissemination of classical music. naxos.com was the first major classical music website, and it remains, without a doubt, the largest – a remarkable resource. He started the Naxos Music Library, streaming the thousands of hours of music to subscribers both educational and individual. The NML as it is known, is now an essential tool for universities and schools from Shanghai to London to New York, offering 24/7 streaming for as wide a range of classical music as one could hope for. When in Hong Kong, writing reports late night in my hotel, I listened to Bruckner symphonies conducted by Tinter streaming down on my laptop courtesy of the hotel broadband.

There is also the Naxos Spoken Word Library where all the audiobook recordings are available 24/7. Many have the texts which can be followed whilst listening – of particular use to listeners with English as a second language.

And now there is www.classicsonline.com which is essentially the Download Shop for Naxos and many other classical titles, including Chandos, BIS, CPO, Wergo, Collegium, Hanssler, Hungaroton. It comes down, like the audiobook downloads from us, as straightforward MP3 files, DRM- and watermark-free for ease of use. Go and check it out!

Though Naxos has offices all around the world, it all emanates from the modern, vibrant city of Hong Kong, and the enterprise of its founder. Klaus has been doing travelling a lot this year – the UK, Germany, France, Greece (where he visited Naxos!), Australia and New Zealand, Scandinavia – for various 20th anniversary jamborees, and in September goes to the United States for the final part of the world tour.

Marin Alsop will be there to help mark the celebrations and launch the final part in her Brahms symphony cycle which has been very well received. Her many music recordings will take centre-stage, of course. But she is also rather proud of her other role introducing classical music to children, not least her own son who, on car journeys, will listen to nothing else!

So, though based in Hong Kong, Naxos and Naxos AudioBooks is very much an international affair!

Nicolas Soames

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The Audio Publishing Association

By Nicolas Soames
15 July 2007

The Audio Publishing Association, the UK’s trade body, held its annual summer party the other night, in the airy arboretum of HarperCollins in Hammersmith, London. Sony DADC, the CD pressing company sponsored it with some rather fine Wiener Riesling, which was quaffed with such vigour by the actors there that it went dry before the end and we were on the red.

It is one of those very pleasant industry jaunts, where we all get together, friends and rivals to network and be slightly indiscreet – perhaps tell a few porkies or at least exaggerations about sales, successes and failures.

There was Clive Stanhope, combative in his blue striped blazer (befitting a man who has made his label (CSA Word) with such English audio classics as Just William and Martin Jarvis) Nicholas Jones, who has produced most of Orion’s audiobooks and has now started his own attractive studio in the heart of fashionable Clerkenwell in London.

And Alison Muirden who runs Macmillan Audiobooks with particular vigour: she recently experimented with a new form of spoken word player, Wordplay, where you buy a preloaded player, complete with recording and earphones for £24.99. We are all thinking of this – the most successful version in the US to date is Playaway. It has quite a few Naxos AudioBooks titles and I wish it all success – but I only hope it improves its sound quality.

Then there were the more recent players in the field such as Quercus which is doing well with Measuring the World read by none other than Naxos AudioBooks’ David Timson (a sincere form of flattery).

Mingling among the publishers were the actors (many of them!) and the producers. This is prime networking time for them, and the regret for me is seeing so much fine talent and only being able to use just a handful. I saw Lorelei King, one of the premiere American female voices in the UK, and she has only appeared on Naxos AudioBooks once. Don’t know why, really... just one of those things.

How appropriate then to see Lorelei, who has just had very good marks in her Ancient Greek language course, walking away having won a raffle prize – Anton Lesser’s reading of The Odyssey on Naxos.

Talking about raffles reminds me of Nigel Anthony. He who read Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet for us (one of my all-time faves) is still reading regularly – he has just finished an unabridged Conrad for us (not till next year, so you will have to wait to see which one!) and was Lucky in our Waiting for Godot. That alone says something about his remarkable versatility. He was there with his wife, Kate Binchy, the actress cousin of Maeve Binchy who records all the Binchy novels. Nigel is a jazz drummer in his spare time, and a rather fine though modest one.

Anyway, I saw that he hadn’t bought any raffle tickets and I had five, so I gave him two. He won two prizes and I didn’t win any... but I couldn’t have wished it on a better man. Listen to Justine, the first of the The Alexandria Quartet and you will see why. You will be hooked.

When I am eventually placed by my children in a care home, it is one of the things I will take with me.

Lots of other Naxos AudioBooks voices were there: David Timson, just back from singing ‘I am the very model of a modern Major–General’ in Pirates of Penzance. Not sure how he found the time: he has come back to a stream of work including producing Juliet Stevenson in the third volume of Shakespeare stories for children he has written, taking seminars on the reading of Shakespeare on radio for BBC Radio actors and producers and preparing for a number of readings, abridged and unabridged; and putting the finishing touches to a story. This is a mystery which I can’t reveal yet... but watch this space.

He was talking to tall Stephen Thorne, a fellow member of the Garrick Club, an elegant haven for actors in London which has the finest library on the theatre in the world (probably). David has invited me for a summer lunch on 2 August (ties are de rigeur) with Stephen and Nigel and hopefully veteran producer John Tydeman – and I am assured that their vegetarian selection has been improved from the last time I went when I was offered an omelette. Worth going just for the wine and the unbelievable paintings of actors from Kean to Gielgud.

Rupert Degas, he of Murakami fame, was there, handing over to me the DVD back-up of Dance Dance Dance which he didn’t want to entrust to the post. Now, some actors are quiet and retiring and shy until the spotlight or microphone descends upon them. Into this category fall Nigel Anthony and the great Andrew Sachs, immortalised as Manuel in Fawlty Towers; but not David Timson for whom the world IS a stage; or Rupert Degas. A chat with Rupert becomes a performance (if you are lucky). I never tire of his flashy facility to slip into character... it is so entertaining and alive, and so well done!

And then there was Daniel Philpott who did so much for us in the early years. Glad to see that he is still busy – having just finished a version of Captain Corelli... and Neville Jason (War and Peace and Proust) just off to his medieval house in France where he will spend some delightful hours at the nearby Casals music festival, with his wife Gillian, a busy art dealer.

They were all talking of scripts, characters, jobs (or no jobs as the case may be); while the producers were talking studios, actors, opportunities; and the company label people were talking sales, marketing, returns, formats, downloads and a dozen other commercial realities.

Behind it all was the recent marketing survey which said that audiobooks had been used by 8% of the book-buying public in the last year, and that many people still thought they were for the blind and old people (Grrrr...). Jo Forshaw, chairman of the APA, put an excellent spin on this for The Bookseller and Publishing News, the two bookish trade magazines, saying it showed how much growth potential there was.

It is the milieu which has been my life for the past thirteen years, and living out in Welwyn, a village 25 miles out of London, I don’t see my colleagues as much as I would like. So, this gathering is always a treat.

Nicolas Soames

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Poetry On The Move

By Nicolas Soames
01 July 2007

I was driving through the Wiltshire countryside the other weekend in the late afternoon sun, past Stonehenge, across Salisbury Plain and, further on, through the chalk downs, over which para-ascenders were floating quietly. I was listening to music on my iPod for a change – can’t quite remember what it was... Tom Waits or Richard Thompson or a quartet.

It came to the end and there was a short pause. And suddenly, totally unexpectedly, came those familiar reflective opening lines of Gray’s Elegy:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Immediately, I was in another space, as they used to say some decades ago. My foot slackened on the accelerator, my mind quietened yet sharpened – how different it is listening to words than music – and I no longer thought of the two-hour journey ahead.

This is, of course, the romantic view of poetry, and many poets – from William Blake to Benjamin Zephaniah (who recorded for us recently and a lively time it was!) – would call out ‘NO!’ for to them that is not what poetry is about.

But it happened to me at that moment. And, of course, poetry is different things to different people at different times – like music, of course; and the range is equally wide. Just how the Elegy got into that playlist I don’t know. But I hope the same thing will happen to you because the serendipitous shift makes one really alert.

Certainly, we hope our new poetry series The Great Poets – one CD to one poet – will provide the same attention-grabbing experience. Curiously, recorded poetry can be a challenge. The best-sellers are, of course, The Nation’s Favourites, or The Best of the Best – popular anthologies come in many guises though the content is so often much the same. And we have done that in the past.

The reason is that is rather challenging to have a 2 CD set on one poet, (two and a half hours if it!)  – more so than a book devoted to one poet. In conventional covers, one can flick around rather casually, and take in two or three at a time... rarely more. But the linear nature of recordings, on CD or downloads, dictate continuous use. Once started, the danger is that one just lets the CDs run long after the attention has waned.

And yet it is good to have a programme devoted to individual poets. That is why we decided on this 1 CD format, with most of the principal works there where possible.

The wealth of English poetry is so great that we could have started anywhere, and while we could say there was rhyme behind the reason of Blake and Kipling – two totally different but very popular poets – the truth is that they just appeared.

The 250th anniversary of William Blake’s birth is a good enough reason, and Robert Glenister, had just finished recording a new stimulating radio play by Peter Ackroyd on the poet directed by Naxos AudioBooks’ producer Roy McMillan. So we joined him with Michael Maloney and Stephen Critchlow to give what we hope is a faithful overview of the work, in all its variety of this unique figure.

As Roy says in his programme notes: ‘Some of Blake’s verse has a rhythm and cadence that stands comparison with the King James Bible; his works for children still sing with innocence and delight; many of his angry social polemics are couched in seemingly easy stanzas; he produced allusive and symbolic works whose poetical strengths carry them through generations even without their meaning.’

Rudyard Kipling comes from the other end of the spectrum. As much as Blake’s eyes were turned inwards or to his heaven, Kipling’s feet were firmly on the ground. That was his strength. And in this new CD are many of his greatest and most popular verses including If and Mandalay, performed by Robert Hardy, with Glenister and Maloney.

Later this year, we release CDs of John Keats and W. B. Yeats – and there will be more next year.

In August, by the way, we release a special 4 CD set with a selection from Spiritual Verses by Jalaloddin Rumi, the thirteenth century Sufi poet whose 800th anniversary is celebrated this year. But more on that later.

Nicolas Soames

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We Launch the New Naxos AudioBooks Download Shop

By Nicolas Soames
04 June 2007

Welcome to the launch of the new Naxos AudioBooks Download Shop. Now, virtually every title recorded by Naxos AudioBooks since it began in 1994 is available to download from our easy-to-use Shop.

There are more than 350 titles available: the great classics of fiction, non-fiction – adult and junior – poetry and drama from around the world. It is a wonderful resource from which any title can be downloaded with just a few clicks of the mouse.

We were determined to make its use a simple and straightforward matter. There are an increasing number of web sites offering audiobook downloads, but we have built our service on some key points:

the sound
A download has to sound good – and that includes the music we use. To this end, we researched and developed a custom encoding strategy to give the best possible quality for both speech and music, whilst keeping the download file size to an absolute minimum.

the download service
Downloads should be portable: transferable from the computer to any mobile device – iPod or any other digital music player, audio- or MP3-CD – with ease, and be unhindered by problems of incompatible file formats or digital locks. Our downloads are supplied as MP3s, without watermarking or DRM (Digital Rights Management). This does mean they are open to the possibility of abuse via extensive file-sharing, but we believe that this is not the way our customers behave.

size and time
Our download files are a balancing act between file size (usually the higher the data rate, the higher the quality of sound, at the expense of file size) and time (smaller files mean faster downloads). Too large, and it takes too long. Too small and the sound is poor. We believe we have struck an ideal balance with our specially encoded 48 kbps files.
   Internet download speeds vary considerably from dial-up to high-speed broadband, but as a guide, a download of an audiobook from us with a running time of 2½ hours might take just a few minutes to download. A five hour audiobook might download in less than ten minutes and at the extreme end, the two volumes of War and Peace, which runs for 61 hours and is a 1.2 gigabyte download, might still download in less than two hours. And judging by sales of Tolstoy’s masterpiece so far, this is more than acceptable to many!

the booklet
All track information, booklet notes and pictures and the cover artwork should also be available. Every one of our download tracks has full ID3 tag information embedded, including cover artwork, and the full booklet is supplied as a PDF with the download.

the cost
We recognise that by offering downloads, we don’t have to pay for CD manufacture, however the download service has its own running costs in (amongst others) bandwidth and servers. However, we have reduced the price so a download is effectively 30% cheaper than the equivalent CD.

So, please visit the Download Shop and explore our range of titles. There are currently some FREE titles and excerpts which you can download to see how easy it is to transfer them from your computer onto your portable device.

At Naxos AudioBooks, we are passionate about storytelling. As I travel into London on the train or in my car I am generally listening to an audiobook – either through my headphones as I rattle into Kings Cross, or through my iPod transmitter in my car. It is a wonderful thing!

Many may still wish to buy the CDs and rip them into their computer – just the other day, I struck up a conversation with a fellow train passenger who said that on his iPod was Anton Lesser reading The Iliad and Romeo and Juliet with Michael Sheen and Kate Beckinsale – which was rather gratifying! – but for those who just want the electronic files – here is the best opportunity!

Please let me know how you get on with the new Download Shop service: email me at soames.downloadshop@naxosaudiobooks.com

While you are about it, if there are any classics that you are particularly waiting for, do let me know. And if you have any comments on our recordings – good or bad! – I would be pleased to hear them.

Nicolas Soames

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Learning on the Road

By Nicolas Soames
01 June 2007

For 30 years, I have practised judo – an ideal active counter-balance to the sedentary nature of much of my life. A few years after I began, I knew that I would go out to train in Japan, the home of judo, and I therefore felt obliged to develop at least a rudimentary knowledge of Japanese out of courtesy to my hosts.

So, like so many people, I turned to language tapes (pre-CD days...). Linguaphone dominated the market at the time, so Linguaphone tapes it was. As I travelled daily to my judo club in London, the sound of ‘konnichiwa’ and ‘watashi no namae wa’ blared in my car, and I gradually became familiar with the sound of the language. I didn’t realise that the set I bought was a very old publication, with antiquated Japanese. I should have guessed when one of the first phrases I learned was ‘the wind soughing through the pine trees’ and I was ordered to struggle with highly honorific ways of greeting the teacher. After I arrived, my very formal phraseology, full of ‘ye’ and ‘thine’ and my knowledge of parts of temple buildings, were an endless source of amusement to my fellow judo students.

But it did teach me how to use that dead time in the car: rather than whiling away the hours listening to the radio, I could learn.

Language courses are among the top sellers in audiobooks, as any scan of Amazon will show. And in the Far East, Naxos AudioBooks is proving popular with Chinese, Japanese and Koreans: they take out subscriptions to the Naxos Spoken Word Library where they can not only listen (online) to the classics, but improve their English by following the onscreen texts. Sherlock Holmes is popular, of course, but, amazingly, so are Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. They are for the more advanced students who, I think, are delighted to practice their English AND enjoy what they are reading at the same time.

But language courses are not the only learning opportunities. What we colloquially call classic literature is a huge treasure-trove of words from Ancient Greece to the twentieth century, both fiction and non-fiction. It is difficult to come to terms with it while at the same time keeping up with one’s own contemporary culture. This is especially true when it comes to the Greek and Roman classics. A vast body of texts remains from those early centuries – a glance at the old Loeb library shows this clearly – and yet we feel we should get to grips with the main works because they form the foundation of Western culture. So many references in the works of succeeding centuries, right up to those of the present day, refer back to the time of Athens, Sparta and Rome, and to understand them we need a basic grounding in the plays of Sophocles, the philosophy of Plato, the poetry of Homer and Virgil. We need to know exactly what happened when Achilles met Hector, when Odysseus met Polyphemus, and when Oedipus met that rather belligerent old man at the crossroads.

Since it began, Naxos AudioBooks has worked to provide a classical platform, a springboard where listeners can acquaint themselves with these legendary figures and their meaningful encounters. And I hope that, over the years, this familiarisation has proved to be a joy, not a chore, because most of the great works are remarkably accessible and direct, not distant and complex as one may think.

This month we release two such works. I am particularly pleased with the unabridged recordings of The Iliad (issued a few months ago) and now The Odyssey, both in new translations by Ian Johnston – a delightfully down-to-earth English-born university teacher who has made his home in Canada. We first recorded these works in the eighteenth-century translation by the English poet William Cowper and released them in abridged form. They are elegant and have their own charm. But the Augustan translation is, it must be said, somewhat antiquated. (This can in itself be pleasing sometimes... when Odysseus strips off to start the battle to reclaim his home, Cowper’s translation remarks on his strong physique and his powerful ‘thews’ – not a commonplace word now, but one I have adopted).

These abridgements were read by Anton Lesser; we turned back to Anton to read the complete Homer in the new Johnston translations, and thrilling it is. I hope you enjoy The Odyssey as much as I did (though I had the privilege of listening to Anton recording it in the small Oxfordshire studio).

Greek Philosophy is, of course, part of the bedrock of Western civilisation, and I felt that though we had recorded Plato’s Republic and Symposium a good introduction would helpful. This is now served by Ancient Greek Philosophy. The giant figures of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle dominate of course, but in their introduction, the brothers Tom and Hugh Griffith have set out to paint a fuller picture, showing where it all came from – the Pre-Socratics – and give us an easy-to-understand overview of the whole subject.

Some of it is really good fun, some of it is fascinating, and there I was travelling at full tilt down the A40, listening to the paraphrases of Diogenes while on the way to Oxford for a celebratory Sunday lunch with the brothers.

We sat down at 12.30 p.m., and rose at 6 p.m., replete with food, wine and the kind of highly entertaining conversation which stems from a classical education worn lightly. Tom is the Diogenes and Plato specialist, while brother Hugh settles more for Aristotle. Not sure what they were fed on as babies – I forgot to ask.

If the truth be told, most of the readers were coming to some of this material for the first time, and so was I... which only goes to prove what I said at the start – that audiobooks is a fine learning medium.

So now you can start with Ancient Greek Philosophy, with each main figure introduced in language we can all understand before salient extracts are presented. Then you will be ready for more extended extracts...

By the time you have worked your way through that, it will be time for the lighter cut and thrust of Herodotus, whose Histories formed the basis of history as a subject. And of course there are also the fascinating biographical accounts by Plutarch – The Greeks and The Romans – which is where we have got so much of our basic information about those times; and finally The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Suetonius’s often salacious portrait of some of the worst rulers of the ancient world, recounted with relish by Derek Jacobi.

Who said the classics were dry and dusty? Oh no. They will liven up any jam on the M25.

Nicolas Soames

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The Voice of the 48 Characters

By Nicolas Soames
03 May 2007

charles dickens is one of the great pillars of English literature. It was not just because he reflected his time so acutely, nor because his novels were real page-tuners – which they remain today. The heart of Dickens is his humanity, his understanding of characters and situations, so real though imagined, that we move with the tensions, the dilemmas, the joy and the tragedy as the novels unfold.

In the hands of outstanding readers, they become more than novels, they become life – only from a different time. This is what has prompted us to pursue with some vigour the unabridged recordings of the great novels.

Anton Lesser was the voice of Charles Dickens for Naxos AudioBooks for the first ten years. His recorded eight abridged versions of some of the greatest titles, including Great Expectations which won a Talkie for the best classic of the year; Hard Times, which has a 3-D Mr Gradgrind; and A Tale of Two Cities... and to be honest I can only hear that famous opening line (‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’) with the Lesser expression, a harbinger of the drama and tragedy to come.

And then, with downloads making unabridged recordings more accessible, we decided to undertake the complete novels. This meant sometimes going back to titles we have already done, and sometimes going into, for us, uncharted territory.

First of all, there was the question of the reader. Should Anton, without doubt one of England’s greatest readers, continue to do them all? Well, he is a busy actor on stage and screen, and he doesn’t have the time – though his range is not in question: listen to the comic genius of The Pickwick Papers as a contrast to the drama of Oliver Twist.

We started the unabridged series with A Tale of Two Cities, and he had to do it. Great Expectations, also, he had made his own (15 CD August release). He recorded these, (and The Iliad and The Odyssey) while playing Leontes in A Winter’s Tale at Stratford. We found a little studio in the Oxfordshire countryside near his home and Stratford to make it easier for him. Then, we had some insistent (!) requests for Little Dorrit (2008 release), which he has now done, and as I write, he has back in Oxfordshire studio doing more, though now we move into the realms of trade secrets!

But there were others we wanted to do. Bleak House called for two readers, and Sean Barrett and Teresa Gallagher proved the perfect team as the narrator and Esther Summerson. We first issued it in complete form on 28 CDs last year, and this month offer it as an 8 CD abridgement.

The top spot for this month, however, goes to David Timson’s unabridged recording of Our Mutual Friend on 28 CDs. David Timson is a well-known personality on Naxos AudioBooks. He reads the Sherlock Holmes canon (to be completed next year) and writes all the remarkably comprehensive notes. He directs many of our Shakespeare recordings, including Kenneth Branagh’s King Richard III. Now, he proves he is equally at home in the world of Charles Dickens – and if you haven’t already heard his podcast, I urge you to go and listen.

Here is an actor totally in command of his subject. David is a writer and theatre historian and knows the political, literary and biographical background of the works he reads – as you can hear from the podcast. This informs his reading of Our Mutual Friend, making it a particularly rich experience.

And towards the end of the podcast, he gives a short masterclass on reading – as he can do with authority: he teaches reading and broadcasting at RADA, one of the top London drama schools.

What happened was this. I was in the studio on the last day of David’s recording of Our Mutual Friend. He was in full flight bringing the story to its conclusion. Studio 3 of Motivation Sound in North London is a small studio, but there was no sense of that from the sound coming through the speakers! And when he finished, with a Timsian flourish, he gave a little chuckle. He came out for a cup of tea, and, still in full flow, started to speak about the novel, its place in Dickens’ oeuvre, the characters and their interaction.

I said, ‘Stop!’ I took his cup of tea, lead him back into the studio, turned on the mikes, and got him to start again. Dickensian to his boots, he launched into what you can now hear on the podcast. It was fascinating!

David scarcely needed prompting. Actually, he had played the same role as I did now with Juliet Stevenson after the conclusion of Emma. Just a judicious question to start the thought processes. So he knew what was required, and he did it without a note or a moment of preparation or forethought. Really, working with actors like David is truly a privilege, and in this case I am delighted to be able to share it with you.

(The lunch-time conversations in the Naxos AudioBooks studio only too often disappear into the ether when they should have been recorded. I remember, in particular, a fascinating interchange with Samuel West, who was recording Keats’ letters and poems Realms of Gold, on the poet’s use of the dash in his letters!)

I exhort you to listen on to the end of David’s podcast. Here, David gives a little master-class in reading. There are 48 characters in Our Mutual Friend. Where do his charactersations come from? How does he do it? He starts to explain – and then (you can hear it!) he slides, without effort, into the characters themselves. He simply can’t help it. They are not marked on the script. He didn’t have a script in front of him! But they were living for him, in that studio, on that day.

This is the art of reading at its most elevated. By a star.

Nicolas Soames

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So you want to download your audiobooks?

By Nicolas Soames
19 March 2007

Everyone is talking about downloading music and audiobooks at the moment. Travel on the train or the London Underground and you see more and more people with tiny headphones in their ears (particularly the distinctive white buds of the iPod) or massive ear-muff sized super-sound machines clamped to the head, or anything in between.

Most of the content they are listening to comes from CDs ripped into their computers. But an increasing amount comes from download providers… with iTunes, of course, leading the market with 70% of music downloads.

With audiobooks, Audible – in its various guises (.com./co.uk/.de) – is the market leader by far. It is the longest established (a survivor, like Amazon, from the dot-com boom) and it has ensured that it works with iTunes and on iPods. In fact, it is the sole audiobook provider for iTunes, which takes selections from the audible database.

But an increasing number of DSPs (download service providers) are appearing, becoming shop fronts for downloads in the same way that high street music shops sell CDs. It should be easy. You go to the download shop that you like in the same way that you go to a book shop – chain or independent – of your choice. You find what you want, you click, download, load onto your player, and hey presto, you are equipped to brave the commuting for another week!

Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple. There are file format problems, sound quality issues, protection issues and download issues to combat. And then there is the added hurdle of getting those file