The Hungarian writer Ferenc Molnár had already turned down offers from Puccini and Weill, no less, before allowing Rodgers and Hammerstein to set his play Liliom to music: it became Carousel, a musical with operatic scope. After last year’s Oklahoma!, John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London cement their status as the Broadway band of dreams with this recording, which includes every note of the complete score – twice as much music as on the original-cast recording.
The cast, including Nathaniel Hackmann’s petulant Billy and Mikaela Bennett’s beautifully sung Julie, is first-rate, with Francesca Chiejina bringing just enough operatic weight to Nettie Fowler. What’s most striking, however, is the stylishness of Wilson’s conducting and the warmth and sweep of the orchestral playing.
The abundance of short cues makes for slightly disjointed listening, and without a staging there’s nothing to contextualise Carousel’s sentimental treatment of domestic violence: perhaps the dialogue between Julie and her daughter – “it’s possible for someone to hit you … and not hurt at all” – could have been omitted to leave only the accompanying music, without damaging the recording’s integrity. However, as a document of the full Carousel score, and a source of its highlights, it’s hard to imagine this being bettered.
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