ORMANDY and The Philadelphia Orchestra - The Early Years Complete - PABX046

The present release is the first in a series devoted to Eugene Ormandy’s early recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra for the Victor and World’s Greatest Music labels from 1936 through 1942, with one additional Victor recording from 1945. While the recordings he made during this period with such legendary soloists as Rachmaninov, Kreisler, Heifetz, Feuermann, Rubinstein, Flagstad, Melchior and others have deservedly remained in the catalog for decades, this series will focus on his purely orchestral recordings, which have been rather overlooked in reissues. Several of the works, like the Schumann, Menotti, Barber and Roy Harris items in this release, were never re-recorded by the conductor in his long career, and some have not been available since the 78 rpm era.

As a musician born and trained in Budapest, one would expect Ormandy’s Liszt to be idiomatic and exciting, and so it is. All the more strange, then, that he recorded Les préludes only once more, for Columbia in 1946, and not at all in the LP era. Stranger still is his track record with Schumann. The Second Symphony heard here was begun at his first Philadelphia session in December, 1936 and completed the following month. Prior to that, Ormandy had recorded the composer’s Fourth Symphony in Minneapolis; but after the Second, he was to make no more Schumann symphony recordings for the rest of his career, a particular loss given the strong and committed reading we have here.

Ravel might seem to be an odd discmate to Liszt and Schumann; but Ormandy’s Philadelphia recordings during this period included very little French music – just this, and a couple aria accompaniments for soprano Dorothy Maynor. He would go on to re-record the Daphnis suite four more times during the LP era (two mono and one stereo version for Columbia, as well as a stereo RCA taping); but the present recording has not been available since the 78 era – surprisingly, given its supercharged excitement that surpasses even Munch’s tempo in the finale.

During the late 1930s and early ‘40s, Ormandy became the go-to conductor for Victor’s recordings of Richard Strauss tone poems. Starting with the first electrical recording of the Symphonia Domestica in 1938, Ormandy and the Philadelphia recorded the present Ein Heldenleben the following year, and would go on to record Don Quixote with Emanuel Feuermann in 1940 (Pristine PASC 168). Ormandy recorded three more versions of Heldenleben during the LP era (Columbia mono, 1954; Columbia stereo, 1960; RCA stereo, 1978), but the present one is the swiftest of them all.

Throughout his conducting career, Ormandy was a committed champion of American music. The works by Menotti and Barber were not only disc premières; they were the first recording of any piece by the former, and the earliest recorded orchestral work of the latter. The Roy Harris suite is comprised of the two orchestral interludes from the composer’s Folksong Symphony framing a newly-added middle section. It remained unissued during the 78 era.

The two Sousa marches, never reissued until now, were recorded as a display of patriotism at the orchestra’s first session after America entered the Second World War. It was to be the last under their Victor contract. Shortly afterward, the first Petrillo Ban on recording went into effect; and when it was over in 1944, the Philadelphia Orchestra began what was to be a twenty-four year association with Columbia (except for one make-up session in 1945 – but that’s a story for another volume . . . )

Mark Obert-Thorn

The present release is the second in a series devoted to Eugene Ormandy’s early recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra for the Victor and World’s Greatest Music labels from 1936 through 1942, with one additional Victor recording from 1945. While the recordings he made during this period with such legendary soloists as Rachmaninov, Kreisler, Heifetz, Feuermann, Rubinstein, Flagstad, Melchior and others have deservedly remained in the catalog for decades, this series will focus on his purely orchestral recordings, which have been rather overlooked in reissues. No remade versions of the Telemann and Mozart works in this release ever appeared during the conductor's long career, and only the Beethoven ever received an “official” extended play reissue from RCA, on a Camden LP.

Ormandy’s forays into the Baroque repertoire during this period centered around Bach transcriptions arranged by Lucien Cailliet (collected on Pristine PASC 444 and 532), although he and the orchestra did record the second and third Brandenburg Concertos anonymously for World’s Greatest Music, forthcoming in this series. The Telemann work, which is reminiscent of Bach’s more well-known Suite in B minor for Flute and Strings, is a showpiece for the Philadelphia’s principal flute, William Kincaid, who joined the orchestra in 1921 and stayed just long enough to welcome Stokowski back in 1960. In an early nod to Historically Informed Performance, an ensemble of 29 players including a harpsichord continuo was used for this recording, although some changes to the text were made in the edition employed (shortening the ending of the Ouverture, playing only the second Minuet and moving the Réjouissance to the end, probably to make it structured more like Bach's suite, which concludes with a fast Badinerie). Twice during the 1950s, Columbia re-recorded the work for an LP issue that never materialized, leaving this the sole Ormandy version.

The Mozart Divertimento which follows on our program is probably the rarest of all of Ormandy’s Philadelphia 78s due to the way it was originally packaged, as two 10-inch discs and a 12-inch disc, the last of which is almost invariably found broken in the album. It was a work to which Ormandy never returned in the studio. The Beethoven symphony is seldom found for a different reason: Ormandy had the bad timing to record it nine months before Toscanini made his own much-admired set with the BBC Symphony, which appeared on the same HMV/Victor labels. Like the Mengelberg/New York Philharmonic account which it was intended to replace in the catalog, it ran to eight sides in order to include the first movement repeat, making it somewhat less competitive to record buyers who could purchase Weingartner’s repeat-free version (made the same month as Toscanini’s) on six sides.

Sibelius was one of Ormandy’s specialties throughout his career. He had already recorded the First Symphony in Minneapolis on ten sides, but re-made the set only six years later in Philadelphia on eight longer sides in a somewhat faster (but not by much!) reading. The recordings of the three tone poems were done for an album celebrating the composer’s 75th birthday. Although he was to re-record Finlandia and The Swan of Tuonela several more times over his career, Ormandy only returned to Lemminkäinen’s Return on disc for his two complete recordings of the Lemminkäinen Suite (the earlier of which is on PASC 205). As commentator Edward Johnson points out, Ormandy adds tam-tam strokes in the nine bars before Letter P of the Return, an addition to the score also employed by Beecham in his earlier recording. The Enescu was another work Ormandy had previously recorded in Minneapolis, the earlier version on four 10-inch sides. Here, the conductor was able to fit it on two rather long 12-inch sides in a performance, like that of Lemminkäinen’s Return, of incredible speed and immense excitement.

Mark Obert-Thorn

The present release is the third in a series devoted to Eugene Ormandy’s early recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra for the Victor and World’s Greatest Music labels from 1936 through 1942, with one additional Victor recording from 1945. While the recordings he made during this period with such legendary soloists as Rachmaninov, Kreisler, Heifetz, Feuermann, Rubinstein, Flagstad, Melchior and others have deservedly remained in the catalog for decades, this series focuses on his purely orchestral recordings, which have been rather overlooked in reissues. Except for the Symphonia Domestica, which was previously reissued on LP (Camden) and CD (Biddulph), none of the recordings presented here have been available since the 78 rpm era.

Leopold Stokowski left a formidable legacy of Wagner recordings during the years of his directorship of the Philadelphia Orchestra, enough to fill more than four CDs; so it is rather surprising that Ormandy’s 10-inch disc of Meistersinger excerpts presented here is his only example of orchestral Wagner on record during this period, although he also provided several vocal accompaniments for Flagstad and Melchior.

Ormandy had first recorded the Brahms Second Symphony with the Philadelphians anonymously for the World’s Greatest Music series nine months before the version presented here (to be released in Volume 5 of this series). The earlier version was on ten sides, while this one was on twelve, like the 1929 Stokowski version (reissued on Pristine PASC 562) it was intended to replace. Apparently, this was not due to a more expansive interpretation; indeed, according to Richard Kaplan’s Philadelphia Orchestra discography, the 12-sided version is 11 seconds faster than the ten-sided one. Victor’s decision made the set rather uncompetitive in a field which otherwise had ten- or even eight-sided Brahms Seconds. (Interestingly, the earlier version was reissued on RCA’s Camden LP series, the only World’s Greatest Music release to be so chosen.)

Ormandy had already recorded a best-selling album of Johann Strauss overtures and waltzes with the Minneapolis Symphony before setting down the three waltzes heard here. While he remade the Emperor Waltz ten years later for a Columbia LP, the other two had to wait until the stereo era for another Ormandy/Philadelphia version. Richard Strauss’ Rosenkavalier Waltzes had also already been set down by Ormandy in Minneapolis on three ten-inch sides. Here, he was able to take advantage of longer recording times to re-record it on a single 12-inch disc.

Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler Symphony was a mere six years old when Ormandy made the recording included here. It was only the second version on disc, following the composer’s own 1934 recording; and the two would go on to become the only sets available during the 78 rpm era. As so often when they were playing what was then “new music”, Ormandy and his Philadelphians bring an almost missionary zeal to the performance, which blazes with intensity, particularly in the brass.

For his first Richard Strauss tone poem on disc, Ormandy chose the then lesser-known Symphonia Domestica for what became its first electrical recording. (There had been a late acoustic set with Eduard Mörike; and the only other 78-era recording would be Carl Schuricht’s version from three years later, on PASC 320.) For the next couple years, Ormandy would be Victor’s “go-to” conductor for Strauss tone poems, setting down Ein Heldenleben in 1939 (in Volume 1 of our series, PASC 578) and Don Quixote with Feuermann the following year (PASC 168). While he continued to record and re-record most of the major Strauss orchestral works until the end of his career, he never returned to the Domestica, leaving this his sole statement on the work.

Mark Obert-Thorn

The present release is the fourth in a series devoted to Eugene Ormandy’s early recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra for the Victor and World’s Greatest Music labels from 1936 through 1942, with one additional Victor recording (the Nutcracker Suite presented here) from 1945. While the recordings he made during this period with such legendary soloists as Rachmaninov, Kreisler, Heifetz, Feuermann, Rubinstein, Flagstad, Melchior and others have deservedly remained in the catalog for decades, this series focuses on his purely orchestral recordings, which have been rather overlooked in reissues. Among the items included in the present program, only the Tchaikovsky “Pathétique” has seen previous reissue on both LP and CD. The Nutcracker Suite was last offered on a 10-inch LP in the early 1950s; the Tchaikovsky Fifth has been unavailable since the 78-rpm era; and the two Rimsky-Korsakov items are seeing their first release here.

The Nutcracker Suite might rightly be called the Philadelphia Orchestra’s “contractual obligation album.” Ormandy had first recorded the work with them in December, 1941; but like many Victors of that period (including the Philadelphia sides conducted by Toscanini), the matrices suffered from processing problems that rendered them too noisy to release. By the end of the first Petrillo recording ban (1942-44), the orchestra had switched to Columbia, making their first records for that label in November, 1944. However, under their contract, they were allowed to re-make existing Victor sides that were awaiting release. And so, in January of 1945, this single album was made for RCA. The Overture is taken at a notably broader tempo than Ormandy would use in his 1952/3 Columbia LP remake, although for that later recording, he would still have the violins play an octave higher in repeated phrases in the “Waltz of the Flowers.”

Although he inherited Stokowski’s orchestra, Ormandy’s conducting idol was Toscanini, whose influence can be heard in the two Tchaikovsky symphony recordings. While the Fifth Symphony was not in the Italian Maestro’s repertoire, Ormandy’s 1941 recording reflects a Toscanini-like approach, with swift tempi and ever-forward movement (e.g., the end of the first movement). Ormandy restores the big cut in the fourth movement taken by Mengelberg (Pristine PASC 511) and Stock (PASC 684), as well as smaller ones imposed by Stokowski, like the lead-in to the final peroration in the fourth movement. A similar aesthetic is evident in the “Pathétique”, which dates from Ormandy’s first recording session with the Philadelphians in December, 1936 (with the first and last sides remade a month later). Ormandy would go on to re-record these two symphonies four more times over his long career, in increasingly more expansive readings.

The arrangement Ormandy made of a short, atmospheric scene from Rimsky-Korskakov’s opera, Christmas Eve, begins with music reminiscent of the Eastern Orthodox hymn Tchaikovsky used to open his 1812 Overture. No coupling for this side was recorded at the time, so it has remained unissued until now.

Ormandy’s Philadelphia recordings of Russian repertoire during this period are sparse; the only other work taken down in the studio was Lucien Cailliet’s transcription of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (already reissued on PASC 444). To conclude our program, we turn to a previously unpublished live performance. On the same Easter Sunday that Marian Anderson’s historic recital on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial captured the attention of American radio listeners, Ormandy and his Philadelphians offered a broadcast concert on NBC’s “Magic Key of RCA” program, concluding with a blazing performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture , which had to be abridged to fit the one-hour time constraint of the program.

Mark Obert-Thorn

The present release is the fifth and last in a series devoted to Eugene Ormandy’s early recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra for the Victor and World’s Greatest Music labels from 1936 through 1942, with one additional Victor recording from 1945. While the recordings he made during this period with such legendary soloists as Rachmaninov, Kreisler, Heifetz, Feuermann, Rubinstein, Flagstad, Melchior and others have deservedly remained in the catalog for decades, this series has focused on his purely orchestral recordings, which have been rather overlooked in reissues. Among the items included in the present program, only the Brahms has seen a previous LP reissue, while none of the recordings have been released on CD.

The “World’s Greatest Music” label was begun by the Publishers Service Company (a distribution arm of the New York Post) to market recordings of standard Classical repertoire at prices which substantially undercut the majors. Neither the conductors nor the orchestras were named on the labels; but subsequent research has identified albums recorded by Fritz Reiner and the New York Philharmonic and Artur Rodziński with the NBC Symphony, among others. The recordings were made by RCA Victor and were pressed by them as well, with nothing on the discs or packaging to betray their origins. The recordings were phenomenally successful, with Time magazine reporting in 1940 that over one million records in the symphonic series had been sold.

In order to keep production costs down, reduced forces were used for the sessions (here, 49 players for the Bach and Mozart works, and 74 for the remainder). The chamber-sized forces work to the advantage of the earlier music, with the Bach in particular losing the bloated, Romanticized approach of Stokowski’s 1928 recording of the Second Brandenburg with the same ensemble. While no one will confuse Ormandy’s Bach with an “H.I.P.” reading, the approach here was part of an interim step (exemplified by the Busch Chamber Players’ 1935 set of the Brandenburgs) to move past the slow tempi and massive sound that characterized many orchestral Bach performances up through the early 1930s. Alone among the standard repertoire “greatest hits” on this release, the Bach items were never later re-recorded by Ormandy during his long career.

Although he inherited Stokowski’s orchestra with its lush sound, Ormandy’s conducting idol was Toscanini; and that connection informs his approach to the Classical and Romantic era works here. The Mozart (even with its slight portamento on the opening phrase, heard also in some Toscanini performances), Beethoven and Schubert might almost be mistaken for the work of The Maestro, save for a reluctance to fully press the vehemence of the louder passages, opting instead for a more rounded, “beautiful” sound. In some of the recordings (the first movement of the Beethoven and the Brandenburg Second in particular), the lack of rehearsal for the sessions can occasionally be heard in slight off-beat ensemble irregularities, albeit ones from which the orchestra quickly recovers.

The Brahms is a particularly successful interpretation in this series – a glowing, full-hearted reading which finds Ormandy avoiding the temptation to accelerate toward the ending. It was re-recorded for release on Victor nine months later, in a version lavishly spread over twelve sides (as opposed to the ten for WGM), a reading which was actually a few seconds faster than the one presented here. (The later one has been reissued in Volume Three of this series, PASC 634). As one might expect, there are no great differences between the two; yet, oddly, the WGM version was chosen by RCA for reissue in its Camden LP series (CAL-236), where it was credited to the “Claridge Symphony Orchestra”, the only such attribution given.

Prefacing the WGM releases here is a Victor recording inadvertently left out of previous volumes in our series. The arranger, Charles O’Connell, was Victor’s Red Seal director, and made recordings as a conductor and organist for the label. As producer for the Philadelphia Orchestra’s sessions, he was intimately familiar with Stokowski’s Bach orchestrations, and was able to replicate his “formula” of introducing various orchestral choirs in succession very closely in the excerpt from the St. Matthew Passion presented here. O’Connell also persuaded other conductors to record his transcriptions, including Monteux and Stokowski himself.

Mark Obert-Thorn