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Special offer. Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady
Scarlett Strallen (Eliza Doolittle), Jamie Parker (Henry Higgins), Alun Armstrong (Alfred P. Doolittle), Malcolm Sinclair (Colonel Pickering), Laurence Kilsby (Freddy Eynsford-Hill), Julia McKenzie (Mrs Pearce), Penelope Wilton (Mrs Higgins)
Sinfonia of London, John Wilson
Awards:
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Presto Recording of the Week, 26th September 2025
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Limelight Magazine, November 2025, Editor's Choice
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Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2025, Editor's Choice
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Presto Recordings of the Year, Winner 2025
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BBC Music Magazine Awards, 2026, Shortlisted - Opera & Stage
[The appendix] may be for completists only, but the standard text is delivered to such a high standard as to make this an essential set for anyone seriously interested in the score. Apart from...
Special offer. Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady
Scarlett Strallen (Eliza Doolittle), Jamie Parker (Henry Higgins), Alun Armstrong (Alfred P. Doolittle), Malcolm Sinclair (Colonel Pickering), Laurence Kilsby (Freddy Eynsford-Hill), Julia McKenzie (Mrs Pearce), Penelope Wilton (Mrs Higgins)
Sinfonia of London, John Wilson
Purchase product
Awards:
-
Presto Recording of the Week, 26th September 2025
-
Limelight Magazine, November 2025, Editor's Choice
-
Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2025, Editor's Choice
-
Presto Recordings of the Year, Winner 2025
-
BBC Music Magazine Awards, 2026, Shortlisted - Opera & Stage
[The appendix] may be for completists only, but the standard text is delivered to such a high standard as to make this an essential set for anyone seriously interested in the score. Apart from...
About
John Wilson comments: My Fair Lady is the quintessential American London musical. There is not a semiquaver or a semi-colon in the wrong place. Steven Wilkie, one of the fiddle players in my orchestra, describes it as The Marriage of Figaro of the twentieth century. And when I asked the great opera conductor Richard Bonynge what the finest post-World War Two operas are, he said, My Fair Lady, Oklahoma!... theyre the great operas that will live on. We have recorded every note, including underscoring, plus all the music written but cut before opening, with the instrumentation exactly as it was on opening night. Also, thanks to recent research, we have the restored original orchestrations. The reason I want to record everything the composer, lyricist, book-writer, and orchestrator did is that I believe it is a piece of significance by people who were masters of their art and craft. This was not written in an afternoon; it was chiselled away for months. They were ruthless in excising anything they felt would not make the grade. We have a duty to set down as closely as we can their final thoughts on what they created.
Contents and tracklist
- Scarlett Strallen (Eliza Doolitte), Jamie Parker (Henry Higgins), Alun Armstrong (Alfred P. Doolittle), Malcolm Sinclair (Colonel Pickering), Laurence Kilsby (Freddy Eynsford-Hill)), Julia McKenzie (Mrs Pearce), Penelope Wilton (Mrs Higgins)
- Sinfonia of London
- John Wilson
Spotlight on this release
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Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady from John Wilson and Sinfonia of London
26th Sep 2025
Jamie Parker and Scarlett Strallen head a luxury cast on this luscious recording of the Pygmalion-inspired 1956 musical about an irascible phonetician who gives a Cockney flower-girl a socio-linguistic makeover.
Awards and reviews
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Presto Recording of the Week26th September 2025
-
Limelight MagazineNovember 2025Editor's Choice
-
Gramophone MagazineAwards Issue 2025Editor's Choice
-
Presto Recordings of the YearWinner 2025
November 2025
[The appendix] may be for completists only, but the standard text is delivered to such a high standard as to make this an essential set for anyone seriously interested in the score. Apart from the outstanding orchestral playing and choral singing...the finely chosen cast is a joy in terms of vocal and verbal expertise.
27th September 2025
The cast has been carefully chosen. Scarlett Strallen makes an intelligent, nicely lyrical Eliza Doolittle...the sizzling playing of Wilson and his orchestra in the instrumental numbers keeps the zest levels high. To aficionados of Broadway and the West End this recording is self-recommending.
Awards Issue 2025
This is essential listening for anyone who loves musical theatre. Enchantment really does pour out of every door; this is a landmark recording, destined to give enormous and lasting pleasure.
26th September 2025
Wilson combines Henry Higgins’s forensic ear for detail with heart-on-sleeve love for the score…Parker gives us a younger, more volatile and infinitely more musical incarnation of the snobbish phonetician than the role's creator Rex Harrison, and there’s real erotic chemistry with his protegée Eliza. Armstrong is a delight as her wily, workshy father, despatching his showstoppers with gutsy flair, wicked comic timing and a pitch-perfect Cockney accent which never veers into Dick Van Dyke territory.
Limelight Magazine November 2025
Wilson’s instincts are sound, moving seamlessly from spoken word to song…[Strallen] sings Eliza Doolittle with panache. She’s fiery when she needs to be, and vulnerable too...As Higgins, Jamie Parker captures the overweening arrogance and casual misogyny of the man while investing the role with sufficient charm to prevent us ever switching off...In short, another one for the library.
