Classical Music: Oklahoma!— Rodgers And Hammerstein

What more could anyone ask for? The great John Wilson, conducting with an orchestral arrangement that is lush but stays on the right side of sentimentality, and Sierra Boggess, whose voice could melt the rivets out of battleships As no doubt you can tell, I was much impressed by this recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!

It must have been quite an evening in 1947 at the Drury Lane Theatre when Oklahoma! was first staged in London to a war-weary audience. As the overture played, a woman on stage worked at a spinning wheel when a voice off-stage began to sing, ‘There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow', and they were launched into a world of melody, colour, and optimism. Those first-nighters must have walked out of the auditorium feeling braced against the dreariness of post-war Britain. Whether they felt uplifted or not, the British public liked it, and the show ran for 1543 performances.

The plot plays in a major and a minor key: the major one is the complicated love story of Laurey and Curly; the minor one is the establishment of Oklahoma as a state of the union. The former has a universal appeal; the latter may have been understood only by Americans. The story is based on Lynn Riggs’s 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs.

This was the first collaboration between Rodgers and Hammerstein and heralded a string of hit musicals. The combination of the composer and the lyricist was a match made in the happy hunting grounds of Hollywood. And with John Wilson at the helm, a musician who understands what the likes of Franz Waxman and Erich Korngold were trying to achieve, we are as close as we are ever going to get to that distinctive 1940s sound.

Let me say right away that I am a Sierra Boggess fan. She has a precise soprano voice that expresses a wide range of emotions. My regret in listening to this CD is that her acting is not visible: the arched eyebrow denoting humour; the eyes sliding to one side signalling attraction; the smile that beams around the audience like a searchlight; but principally, the voice.

Nathaniel Hackman gives a good account of Curley. He is clearly the man to woo Laurey; he is ardent but not above having fun at her expense. His encounter with Jud Fry (Rodney Earl Clarke) switches to a darker mood (‘Poor Jud is dead’), but we are soon back with the exuberance of Richard Rogers’s score.

Both leads singing in harmony achieve the balance that points up the unsentimental lyrics of a song like ‘People will say we’re in love’ with its brilliant eye for comic detail but also its knowing nod as we listen to lovers not wanting to commit too far.

The second leads, Jamie Parker and Louise Dearman, do just as they should: provide time for costume changes and support the principals by paralleling their activities. I am not sure how well ‘I’m just a girl who can’t say no’ would go down with certain audiences today, but let’s just hope they would see it for the benign fun it is.

Oklahoma! launched a more ambitious type of musical onto the stage. As opera had done, the musical found a vehicle for character development, consideration of social issues, and questions of politics. Sugar coated? Perhaps, but conferring some heft onto otherwise frothy amusement.

Do we think about these things as the ensemble gathers on stage for a rousing version of the title song? I think not. We live in the moment, with the tunes we hummed along to while sitting in our seats stuck in our heads for days.