Customer Reviews
Excellent recording - By: PhilosopherKing, 28 Nov 2008 
I specialisedin mathematics & the science subjectsin the sixth form at school, then read for engineering degree & then trained as a chartered accountant.
I am now forty eight years old but have taken an interestin the arts & humanities subjects ever since finishing my accountancy examinations nearly twenty five years ago. Reading poetry can be difficult as one doesn't always know where to put the stress & intonation.
This excellent recording has made all the difference & I thoroughly recommend it.
Indeed, I have recently enrolled to do the arts & humanities foundation with the Open University & my course beginsin February 2009.
worlds and words - By: Paul Callick, 20 May 2008 If you're considering buying this, my advice is, don't hesitate (in case Naxos decide one day to withdraw it)! This reading of the poem is simply a minor marvel. What Lesser responds to are all the details of Milton's writing: that intelligence, strangeness, inventiveness, humour, mischief, Milton's way with worlds & words, too. Lesser reads without pomposity or over-weighting the lines. Milton's wonderful, voyaging sentences therefore uncurl like an unexpected landscape before us, so experimentally, with delay & suspense, shifting & adjusting meaning as the sentence rolls on, or suddenly undeceiving us with an unnerving undermining of what we think's going to be said...it's a terrific experience, to hear this. And especially interesting since, for Milton of course, Paradise Lost had to be a spoken-aloud poem (long after he'd gone blind). Anton Lesser's reading is surely definitive, for our generation. Well done to him, & to Naxos.
epic poetry is meant to be heard! - By: S. K. Lewicki, 02 Feb 2008 This is truly a superb recording. To hear the flow of Milton's verse & the full richness of his language - I only recently learned that he contributed more new words to the English language than Shakespeare - is a revelation, & has certainly added to my appreciation of the work. Somehow Paradise Lost is less forbidding, & the epic story it recounts is part of our Western cultural & religious heritage which should not fade into obscurity & inaccessibility. Hopefully Anton Lesser's recording will make Milton's work accessible to more people.
paradise lost read by anton lesser - By: C. phillips, 19 Nov 2006 Made me appreciate why this poem is the pinnacle of english literature - the musicality of the language. The story unfolds translucently & Anton lesser cannot be faulted for his rendition.
A lack of gravitas - By: Oxford listener, 11 Oct 2006 
It is often said that one's first experience of a piece of music is definitive: forever afterwards one finds oneself comparing newer (and often perfectly good) renditions with the pacing & the phrasing of the first. Perhaps this is part of the problem which I experience with Anton Lesser's reading of the epic Paradise Lost. I remember the poem beautifully read by my father, who knew great tracts of it by heart, & whose relaxed baritone voice suited the grand scale of the material infinitely better than Lesser's unremarkable tenor. This poem should be read by those rare actors who can play kings. Lesser makes a mistake when he attempts to put on voices for the various characters. The womanish voice that he adopts when starting Sin's speech reverts, for example, accidentally back into Lesser's normal tones as the speech proceeds. I think overall this is an acceptable performancein that it is better than nothing, but I am looking out for a better recording.
