Music for the Royal Fireworks
A smaller UK record company, Pye Records, asked Mackerras to record Handel's "Music for the Royal Fireworks". 'We had to do that in the middle of the night, in order to get our twenty-six oboes together.' The recording, issued in 1959, was received with critical acclaim for attempting to reproduce the sound Handel would have heard, rather than the smoother orchestral arrangements usually played at that time.