Eugene Ormandy

Eugene Ormandy.

Eugene Ormandy (November 18, 1899–March 12, 1985) was a Hungarian-born Jewish conductor and violinist.

Biography

Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the National Hungarian Royal Academy of Music (now the Franz Liszt Academy of Music) at the age of five. He gave his first concerts as a violinist at age seven and graduated at 14 with a master's degree. In 1920, he obtained a university degree in philosophy. In 1921 he moved to the United States of America. Around this time Blau changed his name to "Eugene Ormandy," "Eugene" being the equivalent of the Hungarian "Jenö." Accounts differ on the origin of "Ormandy"; it may have either been Blau's own middle name at birth,^[1] or his mother's.^[2] He worked first as a violinist in the Major Bowes Capitol Theater Orchestra in New York City. He became the concertmaster within five days of joining and became the conductor of this group which accompanied silent movies. Ormandy also made 16 recordings as a violinist between 1923 and 1929, half of them using the acoustic process.

Arthur Judson, the most powerful manager of American classical music during the 1930s, greatly assisted Ormandy's career. When Arturo Toscanini was too ill to conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1931, Judson asked Ormandy to stand in. This led to Ormandy's first major appointment as a conductor, in Minneapolis.

Career

Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra

Ormandy served until 1936 as conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, now the Minnesota Orchestra. During the height of the Great Depression, RCA Victor contracted Ormandy and the Minneapolis Symphony for many recordings. A unique clause in the musicians' contract required them to earn their salaries by performing a certain number of hours each week (whether it be rehearsals, concerts, broadcasts, or recording). Since Victor did not need to pay the musicians, it could afford to send its best technicians and equipment to record in Minneapolis. Recordings were made between January 16, 1934, and January 16, 1935. There were several premiere recordings made in Minneapolis: John Alden Carpenter's Adventures in a Perambulator; Zoltán Kodály's Háry János Suite; Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and, specially commissioned for recording Roy Harris' American Overture based on "When Johnny Comes Marching Home". Ormandy's recordings also included readings of Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 and Mahler's Symphony No. 2 which became extremely well known. The high technical and interpretive quality of these records contributed to Ormandy's musical reputation.^{[3][not specific enough to verify]}

The Philadelphia Orchestra

Ormandy's 44-year tenure with the Philadelphia Orchestra began in 1936 and became the source of much of his lasting reputation and fame. Two years after his appointment as associate conductor under Leopold Stokowski, he became its music director. (Stokowski continued to conduct some concerts in Philadelphia until 1941; he returned as a guest conductor in 1960.) As music director, Ormandy conducted from 100 to 180 concerts each year in Philadelphia. Upon his retirement in 1980, he was made conductor laureate.

Ormandy was a quick learner of scores, often conducting from memory and without a baton. He demonstrated exceptional musical and personal integrity, exceptional leadership skills, and a formal and reserved podium manner in the style of his idol and friend, Arturo Toscanini.^{[citation needed]} One orchestra musician complimented him by saying: "He doesn't try to conduct every note as some conductors do."^{[citation needed]} Under Ormandy's direction the Philadelphia Orchestra continued the lush, legato style originated by Stokowski and for which the orchestra was well known. Ormandy's conducting style was praised for its opulent sound, but also was criticized for supposedly lacking any real individual touch.

Ormandy's orchestral seating plan was a standard one. The violins were not divided and therefore antiphonal effects were not enhanced. The first and second violins and harps were on the left. Woodwinds were in the center, with the horns behind them. The basses, cellos, and violas were on the right, along with the rest of the brass instruments. Percussion was in the center of the back.

Ormandy was particularly noted for conducting late Romantic and early 20th century music. He particularly favored Bruckner, Debussy, Dvořák, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, and transcriptions of Bach. His performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, and Mozart were considered less successful by some critics, especially when he applied the lush, so-called "Philadelphia Sound" to them. He was particularly noted as a champion of Sergei Rachmaninoff's music, conducting the premiere of his Symphonic Dances and leading the orchestra in the composer's own recordings of three of his piano concertos in 1939-40. He also directed the American premiere of several symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich. He made the first recording of Deryck Cooke's first performing edition of the complete Mahler's Tenth Symphony, which many critics praised. He also performed a great deal of American music and gave many premières of works by Samuel Barber, Paul Creston, David Diamond, Howard Hanson, Walter Piston, Ned Rorem, William Schuman, Roger Sessions, Virgil Thompson, and Richard Yardumian.

The Philadelphia Orchestra under Ormandy's direction frequently performed outside of Philadelphia, in New York and other American cities, and undertook a number of foreign tours. During a 1955 tour of Finland, Ormandy and many of the Orchestra's members visited the elderly composer Jean Sibelius at his country estate; Ormandy was photographed with Sibelius and the picture later appeared on the cover of his 1962 stereo recording of the composer's first symphony. During a 1973 tour of the People's Republic of China, the Orchestra performed to enthusiastic audiences that had been isolated from Western classical music for many decades.

After Ormandy officially retired as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1980, he served as a guest conductor of other orchestras and made a few recordings.

Ormandy died in Philadelphia on March 12, 1985. His papers, including his marked scores and complete arrangements, fill 501 boxes in the archives of the University of Pennsylvania Library.

Guest appearances

He also appeared as a guest conductor with many other orchestras. In November 1966 he recorded a highly memorable and idiomatic rendition of Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra. This and a recording in July 1952 which he conducted anonymously with the Prades Festival Orchestra with Pablo Casals in the Robert Schumann Cello Concerto represented his only commercial recordings made outside the U.S. In December 1950 he directed New York's Metropolitan Opera in a fondly-remembered production of Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus in English, which also was recorded. In 1978, he conducted the New York Philharmonic in a performance of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3, with Vladimir Horowitz as soloist for a live recording.

Awards and honors

• In honor of Ormandy's vast influence on American music and the Philadelphia performing arts community, on December 15, 1972 he was awarded the prestigious University of Pennsylvania Glee Club Award of Merit^[4]. Beginning in 1964, this award "established to bring a declaration of appreciation to an individual each year that has made a significant contribution to the world of music and helped to create a climate in which our talents may find valid expression."
• The Presidential Medal of Freedom by Richard M. Nixon in 1970
• The Ditson Conductor's Award for championing American music in 1977
• Appointed by Queen Elizabeth II an honorary Knight of the British Empire in 1976
• Awarded the Kennedy Center Honors in 1982
• He was a recipient of Yale University's Sanford Medal.^[5]

Recordings

Eugene Ormandy's many recordings spanned the acoustic to the electrical to the digital age. From 1936 until his death, Ormandy made literally hundreds of recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra, spanning almost every classical-music genre. Writing in Audoin (1999), Richard Freed wrote: "Ormandy came about as close as any conductor anywhere to recording the "Complete Works of Everybody," with more than a few works recorded three and four times to keep up with advances in technology and/or to accommodate a new soloist or to commemorate a move to a new label."

Thomas Frost, the producer of many of Ormandy's Columbia recordings, called Ormandy "...the easiest conductor I've ever worked with—he has less of an ego problem than any of them... Everything was controlled, professional, organized. We recorded more music per hour than any other orchestra ever has."^{[citation needed]} In one day, March 11, 1962, Ormandy and the Philadelphia recorded Sibelius' Symphony No. 1; the Semyon Bogatyryov arrangement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 7 (for which Ormandy had given the Western hemisphere premiere performance); and Delius' On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring.

Curiously, the orchestra's performing venue at the Academy of Music (Philadelphia) was seldom employed for recording, because record producers believed that its dry acoustics were less than ideal. Moreover, Ormandy felt that the remodeling of the Academy of Music in the mid-1950s had ruined its acoustics. The Philadelphia Orchestra instead recorded in the ballroom of Philadelphia's Broadwood Hotel/Philadelphia Hotel, the Philadelphia Athletic Club at Broad and Race Streets, and in Town Hall/Scottish Rite Cathedral on North Broad Street near the Franklin Parkway. The latter venue featured a 1692 seat auditorium with bright resonant acoustics that made for impressive-sounding "high fidelity" recordings. A fourth venue was the Old Met (Metropolitan Opera House) used for later RCA recording sessions.

Recordings were produced for the following record labels: RCA Victor Red Seal (1936 to 1942), Columbia Masterworks Records (1944 to 1968), RCA Victor Red Seal (1968 to 1980) and EMI/Angel Records (1977-on). Three very late albums were also recorded for Telarc (1980) and Delos (1981) His first digital recording was an April 16, 1979 performance of Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra for RCA.^[6]

He recorded for RCA in Minneapolis (in 1934 and 1935), too, and continued with the label until 1942, when an American Federation of Musicians ban on recordings caused the Philadelphia Orchestra to switch to Columbia, which had reached an agreement with the union in 1944, before RCA did so. Among his first recordings for Columbia was a spirited performance of Borodin's Polovetsian Dances. Ormandy conducted his first stereophonic recordings in 1957; these were not the orchestra's first stereo recordings because Leopold Stokowski had conducted experimental sessions in the early 1930s and multi-track recordings for the soundtrack of Walt Disney's 1940 feature film Fantasia. In 1968, Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra returned to RCA; among their first projects was a new performance of Tchaikovsky's Sixth symphony, the Pathetique.

His recordings of Camille Saint-Saëns' Symphony No. 3 'Organ' are considered among the best ever produced. Fanfare Magazine made this remark of the recording with renowned organist Virgil Fox: "This beautifully played performance outclasses all versions of this symphony." The Telarc recording of the symphony with Michael Murray (organist) is also highly praised. [1]

Ormandy was also famous for being an unfailingly sensitive concerto collaborator. His recorded legacy includes numerous first-rate collaborations with Arthur Rubinstein, Claudio Arrau, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Vladimir Horowitz, Rudolf Serkin, David Oistrakh, Isaac Stern, Leonard Rose, Itzhak Perlman, Emil Gilels, Van Cliburn, Emanuel Feuermann, Robert Casadesus, Yo-Yo Ma, Sergei Rachmaninoff and others.

Recording premieres

World premiere recordings made by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Ormandy's baton included:

• Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 10. CBS, November 1965. First commercial recording of all five movements, using Deryck Cooke's performing version;
• Sergei Prokofiev, Alexander Nevsky, Jennie Tourel (mezzo-soprano), Westminster Choir. RCA, May 1945;
• Prokofiev, Symphony No. 6. CBS, January 1950;
• Prokofiev, Symphony No. 7. CBS, April 1953;
• Dmitri Shostakovich, Cello Concerto No. 1, Mstislav Rostropovich (cello). CBS, November 1959.

Ormandy also conducted the premiere American recordings of Paul Hindemith's Mathis der Maler symphony, Carl Orff's Catulli Carmina (which won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Choral Performance in 1968), Shostakovich's Symphonies 4, 13, 14, and 15, Carl Nielsen's Symphonies 1 & 6, Anton Webern's Im Sommerwind, Krzysztof Penderecki's Utrenja, and Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 10.

Ormandy also commissioned a version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition which he and the Philadelphia Orchestra could call their own, since the Ravel arrangement was at that time still very much the property of Serge Koussevitzky, who had commissioned it, made its first recording with the Boston Symphony, and published the score. So Ormandy asked Lucien Cailliet (1891-1984), the Philadelphia Orchestra's 'house arranger' and a member of its woodwind section, to provide a new orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition and he conducted its premiere on 5 February 1937, recording it for RCA later that same year. (It has been reissued on CD by Biddulph.) However, Ormandy eventually returned to the Ravel arrangement and recorded it three times (1953, 1966 and 1973).

Other distinguished recordings

Among the Ormandy/Philadelphia recordings which are widely-regarded as "cream of the crop" include (year of recording included):

• Bartók - Piano Concerto No. 3 (with György Sándor, 1946, Columbia Masterworks, reissued on CD in 2002 by Pearl)
• Debussy - La damoiselle élue (1947, Sony/Masterworks Heritage, with Bidu Sayão and Rosalind Nadell
• Delius - Orchestral works (1961-1962, Sony, an offbeat yet excellent album including Brigg Fair, Dance Rhapsody No. 2, and On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring)
• Holst - The Planets (1975, RCA)
• Liszt - Piano Concerto No. 1 (1952, Sony/Grand Répertoire, with Claudio Arrau) (recorded in one single take)
• Mahler - Symphony No. 10 early arr. by Deryck Cooke (1965, Sony/Masterworks Portrait)
• Carl Orff - Carmina Burana (1960, Sony)
• Prokofiev - Symphony No. 5 (1957, Sony)
• Prokofiev - Symphony No. 6 (1961, Columbia Masterworks, not yet available on CD)
• Rachmaninoff - Symphonic Dances (1960, Sony)
• Rachmaninoff- Symphony No. 2 (1973, RCA)
• Ravel - Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (with Robert Casadesus, 1947, Sony/Masterworks Heritage)
• Shostakovich - Symphony No. 4 (1963, Sony)
• Shostakovich - Symphony No. 13 "Babi Yar" (with Tom Krause and the Mendelssohn Choir of Philadelphia, * 1970, RCA, CD available only in Japan)
• Shostakovich - Symphony No. 14 (with Phyllis Curtin and Simon Estes, 1971, RCA, CD available only in Japan)
• Shostakovich - Symphony No. 15 (1972, RCA)
• Sibelius - Symphony No. 4 (1954, Sony)
• Sibelius - Four Symphonic Poems from the Kalevala (also known as the Lemminkäinen Suite (1978, EMI)
• Richard Strauss - Ein Heldenleben (1960, Sony)
• Strauss - Don Quixote with Lorne Munroe (solo cello) and Carleton Cooley (solo viola) (1961, Sony)
• Tchaikovsky - Violin Concerto in D (with Itzhak Perlman, 1978, EMI)
• Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 4 (1963, Sony)
• Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 5, (1959, Sony)
• Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 6, "Pathetique" (1960, Sony)
• Tchaikovsky - The Nutcracker (excerpts), (1963, Sony)

Notable Reissues

• The Original Jacket Collection: Eugene Ormandy [10 Discs] (2008, Sony BMG Masterworks)^[7]

References

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (April 2009)

• Ardoin, John (1999). The Philadelphia Orchestra: A Century of Music. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ISBN 156639712X. 
• Kupferberg, Herbert (1969). Those Fabulous Philadelphians. New York: C. Scribner's Sons. OCLC 28276. 
• American Record Guide: Eugene Ormandy. Washington: Heldref Publications. November/December 1999. pp. 68. OCLC 23874797. 

External links

• Eugene Ormandy at Allmusic
• Eugene Ormandy at the University of Pennsylvania Library