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Hackmann/Boggess/Sinfonia of London/Wilson(Chandos, two CDs)John Wilson’s scrupulously prepared recording gives us exactly what the audience would have heard on the musical’s opening night in New York in 1943John Wilson started off as a conductor of musical theatre, and made his name in concert performances of Broadway shows. After relaunching the hand-picked Sinfonia of London in 2018 he has gone on to success in a much wider repertoire, but as this recording of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Oklahoma! demonstrates, Wilson has maintained his connections with the world from which his career was launched.Though it is recognised as a milestone in the development of the Broadway musical – the first collaboration between Rodgers and Hammerstein, and the work which first gave the genre real dramatic and musical coherence – Oklahoma! has never been recorded complete before. The original orchestration by Robert Russell Bennett has been reconstructed (though with much of the spoken text from Hammerstein’s book omitted) so that Wilson conducts exactly what the audience would have heard on the opening night in New York in 1943. It’s as scrupulously prepared as any historically informed baroque performance, using an orchestra of the same size as the original pit band, and recovering every morsel of Rodgers’s score, including all the reprises and interludes, as well as the whole of the Dream Ballet that ends the first act. Continue reading...