My grandfather worked at Nimbus records. As a very young child I got first hand experience of this performance. I listened to it, and the looking glass, sooo many times. Sir John was something absolutely special that I'm not sure exists in the world anymore.
Finally!! The other six or seven versions I have listened to seem to think it's a race to get to the end. I love this book, and now I listen to it to relax and unwind. With most versions they read so fast they run the words into each other. I don't want to have to work hard to hear the story, I like to relax and let the story wash over me. Sir John reads it perfectly, every word is clearly enunciated. My only problem is the music, although lovely, sometimes drowns out the voice!
@@sharsimma NOthing worse than these bad voices trying to talk as FAST as possible. It's important to be slow and accurate and calm. It's not a race , it's a reading...get into it...
Such a pleasant experience. Feels like we are seated near him, in some elegant old drawing room somewhere, and maybe some tea has been prepared. The brief musical interludes are very pretty, and luckily they don't interfere with the reading-- it's merely an intro/interlude to establish mood or to bridge chapters, and doesn't interfere with Gielgud's perfect and proper narration. He's clearly enjoying this, the character voices and such.
Well, this is a treat! I always wondered what this particular read version sounded like and it is quite good! Lovely to hear the Victorian tone kept front and center. While a big fan of the late Christopher Plummer, I was disappointed with his move towards trendy characterizations in his recording of the complete ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. Plummer was such an excellent actor and why he stooped to that level of spoon-feeding listeners is beyond me. My absolute favorite recorded reading of both ALICE books remains the complete texts read and performed by Cyril Ritchard with incidental music composed by Alec Wilder. I still have the big boxed 33 rpm LP-recording sets with the facsimile first edition volumes tucked into a cardboard pocket behind the records. After sixty-some years nothing tops those two treasures. They were clearly an act of love for Ritchard who really understood those classics' elements of nonsensical absurdity and fun. For adapted dramatized renderings nothing beats the 1950s CAEDMON recordings with Joan Greenwood as Alice and Stanley Holloway as the narrator leading an exemplary British cast. While abridged they are respectful to the letter of Carroll's text and after hearing Greenwood's unique vocalization one would be hard pressed to imagine anybody else; she gets Alice's essential sophisticated determination and her "inner adult". Thanks very much for posting this!
I was reading along with this (I'm dyslexic and was hoping this would help keep my brain focused and stop my eyes wandering the pages) and I had to stop a few pages in because several chunks or even whole paragraphs are missing in the audio. Pretty disappointed :(
My mother read me the Alice stories (as well as the Just So stories and Mary Poppins). She sang all the songs rather more tunefully than Sir John! That was in 1950.
It is SO disappointing that Gielgud, who is surely among the best "Alice" readers, reads abridged versions of both this book and "Through the Looking-Glass." And the echo gives his voice an annoying booming quality.
@@valentinefrey5164 However, there was only one version of TTLG, and Gielgud also reads an abridged version of that. The best unabridged recordings are by Cyril Ritchard.
@@JMDinOKC Interesting. I had assumed this was Alice's Adventures Underground because of the text that gets Alice directly the hallway to the forest that doesn't occur in Alice in Wonderland. In any case, I'm very happy we have this, abridged or not.
lovely music is besides the point. it obscures the voice, the reading of the book. that is almost as bad as a voice (loud talk) obscuring the music at a concert! It's sad to me that I cannot enjoy such a lovely, dreamy reading because I can barely hear it above the music. if I could download, separate the voice and music tracks, and lower the music track a few decibels, I'd totally do that. I'd also never hire this sound engineer.
The classical segments are a bit too long for my tastes. Had it been a small pause between chapters it would be very pleasant but as it is, it’s fairly distracting. An excellent reading however as Sir Gielgud’s voice is always pleasing to listen to. Thank you for sharing this.
CAN ANYONE PLEASE DIRECT ME TO WHEN ALICE SAYS “things were much more pleasant at home, when one wasn’t growing smaller and larger and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn’t gone down the rabbit hole- and yet-“
Forget this youtube copy. Audio is terrible. Sounds like Sir John is reading out loud in the basement with the door closed and I'm upstairs by the fire!
No reverb, so far as I understand. Nimbus believed in recording in a very fine hall on the English/Welsh border. Their website says: “The recordings were made in the Ballroom of the beautiful Victorian Wyastone Leys house, resulting in a fairly resonant acoustic.”
that's just the natural echo of the room it was recorded in. you realize that Gielgud was an actor and not a sound engineer, right? the room choice may have been intentional, as a touch of echo was considered to lend authority to a voice (Roddy MacDowell and John Houston took advantage of this endlessly) but I'll bet that Sir John left the engineering to the engineers and the direction to the directors. simpler times.
