Today's Spoken Word Albums
There have been some spoken word albums over the past fifteen years or so that have been recorded specifically for compact disc; these have often been combined with classical music. Among them are the Naxos audiobooks, as well as a Chandos Records series of albums which combine the music that William Walton wrote for several Shakespeare productions (including the Olivier film adaptations) with readings from the author performed by such actors as John Gielgud and Christopher Plummer. There is also a Hyperion Records stereophonic re-creation of Ralph Vaughan Williams's 1942 radio play adaptation of The Pilgrim's Progress, again with Gielgud. Excerpts from Gielgud's 1959 one-man Shakespeare production Ages of Man, once available on LP, are now available as a manufactured-on-demand CD.
Today, such websites as BBC, ZBS, L.A. Theatre Works and The Hollywood Theater of the Ear offer full-length recordings on CD of their dramatic productions. These recordings are possibly the closest that modern day discs have come to the spoken word albums of the 1960s.
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