It’s easy to take Eugene Ormandy for granted. As a teenager, I grew up with his Rachmaninoff recordings with The Philadelphia Orchestra; my mother recalls him as “Mr. Dependable,” a moniker I had no reason to question. At the time, few other markers were available, and at least in the United States, Ormandy’s recordings were ubiquitous. Whether for Rachmaninoff or dozens of other composers, he and the Orchestra were omnipresent, seemingly vacuuming up everything in sight.
Some of this was due to restlessness from Columbia Records, which was eager to take advantage of the recent dawn of stereo technology, and the subsequent appetite it fostered. As Jonathan Schroeder and Janet Borgerson note in their 2018 article “How stereo was first sold to a skeptical public,” the major record labels at the time were scrambling to record as much as possible to meet increasing demand — setting in motion what they call a “sonic arms race.” In Ormandy and the Philadelphians, Columbia found a combo both able and willing to take on this Herculean assignment.
Now a sumptuous, staggering new box of recordings has emerged, with 94 examples of Ormandy’s work from 1964 to 1983 with The Philadelphia Orchestra. (There’s a sole outlier, which we’ll note later.) The Columbia Stereo Collection: 1964-1983 — coming on the heels of a slightly smaller box covering 1958 through 1963 — makes a compelling case for an outsized proclamation found elsewhere, declaring the Philadelphians as “America’s Finest Orchestra.” While the debate over that phrase could cause months of conversation over coffee or a nice bourbon, this latest compendium confirms that, during those 19 years, he and the musicians produced many of the classical music world’s most cherished documents.
As in the previous collections, some of these performances are making their debuts in the CD format, such as two Haydn symphonies (Nos. 96 and 101), Bach’s St. John’s Passion, Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis, Schubert’s Sixth Symphony, and excerpts from Massenet’s opera Le Cid. Listeners who never acquired the original LPs (or lost them in that cross-country move) may not have heard these in over 50 years.
Orchestra Builder Extraordinaire
In “Listening in First Class,” the excellent essay that opens the handsome and comprehensive booklet, Rob Cowan reaffirms a widely held opinion that The Philadelphia Orchestra’s reputation rests largely on its strings. Ormandy helped build that sound by acquiring outstanding examples from world-class luthiers. As Joseph C. Schiavo of Rutgers University-Camden writes: “Between 1940 and 1970, Ormandy enhanced the Philadelphia Sound by purchasing the finest string instruments by makers such as Stradivari and Guarneri.” The results of those acquisitions, coupled with their players’ artistry, are audible on many tracks here; Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis or the Bartók Divertimento for Strings are vivid demonstrations, along with the four Brahms symphonies.
But in addition to those legendary string textures, the Ormandy legacy shows overflowing evidence of the talents of the entire group. Two volumes of “First Chair Encores” make an explicit case, featuring principals from all over the Orchestra. A disc of Second Viennese School classics is a field day for the saxophone in Berg’s suite from Lulu, with a pip of an oboe in Webern’s Im Sommerwind, and two Bruckner symphonies, Nos. 4 and 5, get much of their heft from a veritable Niagara Falls of brass.
I personally love the unexpected percussion in Carl Nielsen’s Sixth Symphony, sometimes referred to in my household as his “glockenspiel concerto,” which also bears witness to the Orchestra’s bubbling woodwinds. And the Hindemith referenced earlier, along with Mathis der Maler, earns high marks in all instrumental categories, along with a recorded sound quality that had me shaking my head in disbelief.
Introducing Unexpected Repertoire
While space limitations prevent detailed commentary on each of the 94 recordings, some deserve a spotlight. Listening to Shostakovich’s Fifth and Tenth symphonies, I’m struck by the white-hot virtuosity, which belies some impressions of Ormandy as a maestro more on the genteel side. This version of the Tenth, from 1966, holds its own against worthy recordings by Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, who released their first version of the piece the same year.
A spirited reading of Ives’ Three Places in New England also comes as a revelation, during a time when the composer’s best-known champions were Leopold Stokowski and Leonard Bernstein. On that same recording is Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait, a stirring version narrated by Adlai Stevenson that I referenced in a 2022 article for WRTI. And one of the real bangers is an all-Kodály disc from 1967. For some listeners, it might be their first encounter with the composer, who is best known today for his method of music education. Kodály was also one of Ormandy’s teachers, and this recording, along with the stunning Bartók selections, must benefit from Ormandy’s Hungarian heritage.
To absorb this set is to be startled by the consistently high sound quality, vivid for the time, which provides the ideal moment to credit legendary producer Thomas Frost. Shepherding the vast majority of these recordings, and working with superb engineers in a pre-digital world, his skill remains seductive and competitive.
The results also beg a look at the recording venues. Despite the Orchestra’s concert home at the venerable Academy of Music — its street-level gaslights still flickering today — most of these recordings were made in Town Hall at Broad and Race Streets, formerly the Scottish Rite Temple, and now a parking garage. Almost three dozen recordings were made in another vanished bit of Philadelphia architecture: the Broadwood Hotel (originally the Elks Hotel) at North Broad and Wood Streets, which later became the Philadelphia Athletic Club.
Salt Lake City got the nod for the half-dozen or so projects with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Another worthy outlier — and the only non-Philadelphia disc in this box — is Watford Town Hall in London, where Ormandy recorded Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra.
Ormandy the Ambassador
The remainder of the set contains myriad treasures, which demonstrate the Orchestra’s sleekness, versatility and fire. And while competition for some of the standard repertoire is fierce — I’m looking at you, nine Beethoven symphonies, as well as his well-traveled instrumental concertos and those by Mozart and Tchaikovsky — other discs show an exploratory instinct at a time when composers like Kodály, Nielsen, Ives, and others weren’t as well known in the United States. In the current age, when Mahler recordings are everywhere, people may forget that Ormandy steered the initial release of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, in its completion by Deryck Cooke. Since that time, other ensembles and scholars have weighed in, but Ormandy was there first.
Rarely heard works are everywhere. Listeners familiar with Orff’s Carmina Burana are likely less familiar with his Catulli Carmina, a similar vocal extravaganza, here featuring the Temple University Choir. Respighi’s three Roman tone poems are chestnuts (two are in this collection), but how many know his Church Windows and The Birds? Decades later, one marvels at Ormandy’s confidence — given a recording company that placed enormous trust in him — gently leading his audience into sometimes uncharted waters.
During the orchestra’s 1966 Latin American tour, Ormandy and the Orchestra gave the world premiere of Ginastera’s Concerto per corde (Concerto for Strings) at the Third Inter-American Music Festival in Caracas. Shortly after they returned, they gave the piece its world premiere recording, included here. That notable tour underlines Ormandy’s role as an ambassador for classical music, evidenced by other trips elsewhere during these years. In 1967, he and the orchestra spent three weeks in Japan — their first visit to that part of the world — before returning for concerts in over a dozen Western states on the way home. In 1973, the orchestra was the first American orchestra to visit China, which the Inquirer's Peter Dobrin wrote about in 2019, prior to their 12th tour of that country.
Like most major conductors, Ormandy attracted both admirers and skeptics. Some of his dismissers may have spent too much attention on the recordings with lighter, more popular fare. His prolific career was bound to include some choices that, indeed, fostered a notion that his artistic vision was tethered in average interpretations. And to be fair, not everything in this release may stand the test of time.
But as this overwhelming collection shows, in conjunction with previous compilations, Ormandy’s era was complex — and “dependable” turns out to have its pluses. During these decades, he and his hardworking crew often released multiple recordings in a given year. Anytime that artists adopt a workaday pattern, some results will land on ears as routine or middle-of-the-road. That’s the byproduct of a conductor who placed a priority on showing up. Ormandy knew he had a team of tireless, world-class musicians — an American powerhouse — and was eager to share them with the world. With this kaleidoscopic showcase, it is clear that he succeeded.
