Concert versions of stage musicals have much to recommend them, not least in letting us hear the full orchestral score instead of the pared-down forces that are now standard in the theatre. It's like seeing orchestral players in black tie instead of black shirts: there's no contest! A quick glance at the credits on this DVD of South Pacific tells you it's in the luxury class. The superb playing of the Orchestra of St Luke's under Paul Gemignani and the magic of Robert Russell Bennett's orchestrations glow in the warm ambience of Carnegie Hall. This is, with one notable exception, a swift-paced reading with the conductor relishing and giving full weight to the dramatic moments which the superb recording captures with impressive sonority.

The cast are outstanding. Bass Brian Stokes Mitchell, singing the role composed for Ezio Pinza, brings a powerful presence to Emile de Becque. His daringly slow (but never static) account of “This nearly was mine”, with the melody-line drawn out like a silken thread, has the audience on its feet. Reba McEntire is the younger Ensign. With her Midwest accent, not to mention her candid look and pert expression, she may strike you as more Annie Oakley than Nellie Forbush, but she puts across her numbers with aplomb as well as expressing Nellie's innate unease in her foreign situation. The voice of Jason Danieley as Cable opens up thrillingly in the upper register and I've heard no singer to equal Lillias White as Bloody Mary.

It's unfortunate that they are saddled with scores in their hands, restricting their arm movements and, particularly in the long opening scene, hampering the flow of dialogue in and out of music. When the exuberant chorus, unencumbered, burst in with “There is nothin' like a dame”, the action starts to roll forward and, with the exception of Alec Baldwin who turns in a very stiff performance as Luther Billis, the ensemble, including de Becque's children, charming and without scores, can't be faulted.

This handsomely filmed production catches the audience's tangible sense of expectation that they're about to watch something especially good. They weren't disappointed and nor are we who couldn't be present.