THREE MASSIVE BOX SETS have given us nearly 300 CDs of Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra in recordings made between 1944 and 1968, which is the entirety of his recordings for the Columbia label. Ormandy decamped to RCA, according to a 1967 New York Times piece, with mixed feelings, laying the decision at the feet of the orchestra’s board. But, according to the article, Columbia’s then-president Clive Davis “indicated that a dispute over the repertory Mr. Ormandy had been permitted to record figured heavily in the split.” The article finished with Ormandy recalling his earlier years with RCA, implying that he had more freedom then.
Stokowski, after all, was handsome, dynamic, and relentlessly charming, probably the only symphony conductor ever impersonated by Bugs Bunny. And he’d shaped the orchestra into an ensemble that easily sat alongside the bands in Boston and New York. Ormandy co-conducted for a couple of years before taking over the job completely, and the two co-recorded during that time as well. (Sony should consider issuing a box set of Stokowski’s Philadelphia work.)
The new 21-CD box proves Ormandy’s mettle, offering the excellent recordings Ormandy made between 1935 and 1942 (at which point a musicians’ strike took its toll). During the break, he signed with Columbia. Putting 1935 as the starting point is mildly disingenuous insofar as what dates from that year featured conductor Hans Lange accompanying soprano Kirsten Flagstad in a quartet of Wagner arias. But she’s here because she would return to the studio two years later, this time with Ormandy on the podium, to set down three more by Wagner alongside Beethoven’s “Ah perfido!” and an aria apiece by Beethoven and Weber. And it’s wonderful to hear Flagstad in her prime, sympathetically supported.
Still more Wagner awaits in a bounty of tenor arias sung by Lauritz Melchior recorded between 1938 and 1940. To get an idea of what was bringing down the house at the Met back then, listen to the “Prize Song” from “Meistersinger” and marvel at the richness and strength of that voice, made all the more stirring by the peculiar electronics of microphones from that era, which loved tenors.
Marian Anderson is the other vocalist here, in Brahms’s “Alto Rhapsody,” a setting of melancholy verse by Goethe. From 1939, it’s the first of her three recordings of the piece, and, while the later ones benefit from better audio clarity, this one has a warmth the others lack. The male chorus goes uncredited here, but we learn from a lavish 2021 set devoted to Anderson that it’s the University of Pennsylvania Men’s Glee Club. Three other Brahms songs complete her contribution here.
Philadelphia Orchestra clarinetist and house arranger Lucien Cailliet orchestrated Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” for a 1937 recording included here, and if you’re as accustomed to the Ravel orchestration as I am, you’re in for some pleasant surprises as the textures and accents stray into unexpected places.
Stokowski was still recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra during this time, and sneaks into this set with a single work by Bach, an arrangement of the Preludio from the Violin Partita No. 3 from 1937. It’s on a disc with a bunch of Bach arrangements, most of them – including Stokowski’s – by Cailliet.
And Stokowski’s legacy also hovers in a collaboration with Rachmaninoff. He recorded his Concerto No. 2 twice with Stokowski, in both acoustic (1924) and electric (1929) versions (neither of which is in this set). But he filled in the gaps by recording his other three concertos with Ormandy, with whom he had a much more harmonious relationship. The only other pianist represented in this set is Arthur Rubinstein, with an engagingly brisk Grieg concerto from 1942, the first of Rubinstein’s four studio recordings of the piece.
Three violinists are featured here. Albert Spalding, scion of the sporting goods empire, represents an old-school approach where emotion is at the forefront, which you’ll here in his Mendelssohn concerto and the now-neglected Concerto No. 8 by Spohr (a piece well worth reviving). Fritz Kreisler stars in the earliest of Ormandy’s sessions here, playing his own bizarrely re-worked version of the first movement of Paganini’s Concerto No. 1, part of a three-hour 1936 session that also included Schumann’s Symphony No. 2, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, and two of Cailliet’s Bach arrangements.
Then there’s Jascha Heifetz, teamed here with cellist Emanuel Feuermann for what remains a definitive version of the Brahms Double Concerto. Those two solo instruments twine through music as if sharing a single brain, exploring its intricacies with deceptive ease. Recorded in 1939, it suffered from an engineering mistake that required a re-dub of the master, a sure-fire fidelity-killer back then. The first LP release, in 1950, had a horrific side-join about three-and-a-half minutes into the first movement; it’s been cleaned up since, and is not very noticeable here, but the cleanest version of the recorded was issued on the Pearl label, engineered by Mark Obert-Thorn from some test pressings that were never dubbed and could be digitally corrected.
Feuermann, a stunning cellist who had a too-brief career, also turns in a version here of Strauss’s Don Quixote, an interpretation carrying more wit and amiability than Feuermann’s performance, two years earlier, in 1938, with Toscanini.
Much more Strauss is here, both from Richard, with a Heldenleben, a Rosenkavalier suite, and the Sinfonia Domestica, and from Johann, who slips three waltzes onto the Bach disc. Ormandy’s buddy Sibelius is represented by his Symphony No. 1 alongside Finlandia and other shorter works; many more symphonies, more short works, and the violin concerto would follow in subsequent years.
One “Nutcracker Suite” easily can seem like more than enough, but here you get two. Ormandy’s 1941 recording was deemed too noisy and immediately pulled from release, so, despite the switch to Columbia, a clause in his contract allowed a re-recording to be made for RCA in 1945. The cleaned-up earlier one stands alongside the other with little sonic difference – but keep in mind that all of the recordings in this set are monaural antiques, engaging when coming at you across the room through a good pair of speakers, startlingly hissy and narrow through headphones.
A clutch of Ormandy recordings that escaped even the notice of John Hunt’s authoritative discography were made at the request of the New York Post, long before that newspaper went over to the dark side. “World’s Greatest Music,” the spare cover art declared, crediting the music (on the recording sheets, at least) to “Symphony Orchestra” or “NY Post-Symphony Orchestra” and, on a Camden reissue of the Brahms Symphony No. 2, to the “Claridge Symphony Orchestra.”
Recorded in 1938 and 1939, the series included Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, Beethoven’s Fifth, Schubert’s Unfinished, and Ormandy’s only recordings of any of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, here numbers 2 & 3 in the full-blooded, large-orchestra performances you’ll never hear again.
Not long after these were made, Ormandy was back in the studio to record that Brahms symphony again. This is home territory for the conductor, but this is also a period in his career when he didn’t dawdle, and the symphony benefits from this approach.
Ormandy championed a considerable number of 20th-century composers, especially Russians like Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Neither of them are included in this set, although Rachmaninoff is here, as mentioned. Hindemith’s “Mathis der Maler” Symphony gets one of its earliest recordings in this taut 1940 version. Listen as the final orchestral chorale picks up just a hint of an excess of enthusiasm, enough to make the sparks fly.
Also included are Menotti’s sparkling “Amelia Goes to the Ball” overture – how often do you hear this piece? – Barber’s First Essay for Orchestra, Three Pieces for Orchestra by Roy Harris, and a couple of Sousa marches for good measure.
Then there’s Harl McDonald. Along with being a composer, pianist, and conductor, he was also a Philadelphia Orchestra board member who then served as its general manager for fifteen years. His music is pleasant and forgettable, in the manner of Ferde Grofé’s second-string works, but we get a full CD of it here on which Ormandy conducts his Symphony No. 1, subtitled “The Santa Fé Trail” (it’s Americana, folks!), the Scherzo from his Symphony No. 4, subtitled “Cakewalk” (ditto), and two of his Three Poems on Aramaic Themes. McDonald himself conducts “From Childhood,” a suite for harp and orchestra that was one of many commissions from the orchestra’s harpist, Edna Phillips.
What’s telling is that even as Ormandy was recording these pieces, Stokowski was making visits to the studio to record McDonald’s Magnificat and Concerto for Two Pianos (the two conductors even overlapped in the studio on April 5, 1937, to further the McDonald agenda). So there’s one way to pursue success as a composer, even if your reputation soon fades.
Sony’s Ormandy re-release project has given a lot of well-deserved attention to a conductor whose own reputation was in danger of fading. While the 21 discs in this set could have nestled nicely alongside the other 120 CDs in that massive Columbia Legacy (Mono Years) box, it wouldn’t have been the Columbia Legacy any more – and I have no idea how the licensing works among the formerly independent labels that Sony now owns. So let’s content ourselves with this gem of a set that offers still more great-sounding reasons to reassess the Ormandy Legacy.
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