Our October Recording of the Month is a revelatory account of Oklahoma!, a show that changed the American musical forever. Given its reputation, it’s perhaps surprising that we’ve had to wait until now to hear the complete score in Robert Russell Bennett’s original orchestrations, and performed by the exact forces that opened the show in 1943. Thanks to the expert attentions of John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London, we get to hear the show as Rodgers and Hammerstein would have heard it. Clive Paget caught up with the ground-breaking conductor to find out what ‘historically informed’ means when applied to a Broadway musical.

When people talk about Rodgers and Hammerstein, it’s South Pacific or Carousel they often think of as ground-breaking. But Oklahoma! was just as revolutionary. Is that your feeling?

I think it’s more revolutionary than the others because it was the first time that seamless integration of song – and the development of plot and character through song – was not only fully realised but achieved with that level of success. I remember Stephen Sondheim telling me once, “You know, people talk about all of those things, but they don’t talk about the fact that it was...