It is the centenary year of Richard Rodgers, one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century in any musical tradition. The whole evening was devoted to Rodgers' output in all its facets, not just the famous collaborations with lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II, but his work as a composer of film scores too, with a "symphonic scenario" from his soundtrack to the 1950s epic TV documentary series Victory at Sea.

In an ideal world, we would have been able to savour the piquant combination of Hart's pungent lyrics with Rodgers' effortless tunes. But their partnership was marked purely orchestrally: David Charles Abell conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra in the overture to the 1937 Babes in Arms (sounding brittle and almost jazzy in Hans Spialek's original big-band scoring) and in the dance sequence Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, from Rodgers and Hart's first smash hit, On Your Toes.

The singers arrived for the second half - a complete performance of Oklahoma! that preserved all the original songs, but pared Hammerstein's story right down to its essentials. The result was a seamless flow of matchless numbers, with just enough dialogue to give them a dramatic context, and - using the large- orchestra scoring Robert Russell Bennett made for the film version - sounding richer than it ever would in the theatre.

Lisa Vroman and Brent Barrett were the stubborn young lovers Laurey and Curley, Karl Daymond the threatening Jud; Maureen Lipman was Aunt Eller, repeating the role she took so memorably in the National Theatre's 1990s staging. Even if some of us would have preferred to hear Carousel or South Pacific (surely greater works musically), the exuberance of this tribute was irresistible and did Rodgers' memory proud.