Earlier, I enjoyed Tomin’s readings as well, what little I’ve listend to. Now I can say the same about Chamberlain’s. Thanks for sharing him.
I also once listened to a bit of I think it was the Crito from the librivox recording.
Scotistic, thanks for the link to Chamberlain’s Odyssey. My first impression was that his reading is rather sing-songy whereas I immediately took to Tomin. I’m slowly coming to accept that for the purpose of internalizing meter, Chamberlain’s reading may be the best for me. I’m guided by Leonard Muellner’s advice – get the rhythm into your body:
Interesting. I think this is the Librivox recording scotistic is referring to (by Ἑλένη Κεμικτσή):
https://librivox.org/book-1-of-the-odyssey-by-homer/
If this is a different recording, I’d love to know what other versions are out there using Modern Greek pronunciation. Ioannis Stratakis (Podium-Arts) is my favorite example of native Greek speaker using Restored Classical Pronunciation. But he takes some small liberties with the meter.
It’s funny that using Modern Greek pronunciation is described in terms of whether or not it’s a “good idea”. It’s simply the way Greek people are taught to pronounce Ancient Greek (and Katharevousa, for the older generations) in Greek schools. But I guess one could characterize this practice as a good/bad “idea” outside of Greece, where there is a plethora of competing pronunciation systems to choose from.
In those recordings, Eleni Kemiktsi’s reading seems a bit odd to me in several respects. First of all, she’s following word stress rather than prosody/meter. But she pronounces word-initial rough breathing with aspiration with varying consistency, which is unusual. And she seems to de-voice her γ, making it sound a lot like χ. She’s trying hard to speak very slowly and articulately. But that would lull me to sleep if I tried to listen to it for a long time. Overall, I think she sounds pretty awkward. If you’re going to read the text like it’s prose, using word stress, I think it would be better to pick up the pace and read it in a more conversational manner.
Here’s a metrical version of the 1st 42 lines of the Iliad with Modern Greek pronunciation, “rapped” to a UK Grime beat (with added scansion and translations in English & Demoitc Greek, by N. Kazantzakis):
https://youtu.be/i_jEkH2QFOc