There are several reasons why the popularity of
Eugene Ormandy and the
Philadelphia Orchestra has declined so steeply since their glory days in the '50s and '60s. For one thing,
Ormandy hung on to his post in Philadelphia a tad too long, and recordings from the later '70s and '80s are for the most part marked by audible fatigue. For another, Columbia and RCA, now Song/BMG, have been reluctant to reissue
Ormandy's classic recordings on CD and nearly as reluctant to keep them in print after the first few press runs. But what hurt
Ormandy most of all was a change in fashion. What was once hailed as "The Fabulous Philadelphia" sound was later disparaged as the flabby Philadelphia sound in the face of sharper, edgier performances, and
Ormandy and his orchestra had almost disappeared from sight when this 10-disc Sony/BMG The Original Jacket set was released in 2008.
For anyone with ears to hear, the performances here are magnificent. In these recordings, the
Philadelphia under
Ormandy truly sounds fabulous. Building on
Stokowski's foundation,
Ormandy raised an orchestra built for the gods of music. As amply demonstrated in these performances recorded when the
Ormandy/
Philadelphia partnership was at its peak, there was no better conductor/orchestra relationship at the time. Listen to the plush strings in
Barber's Adagio and
Vaughan Williams' Fantasie on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, the piquant woodwinds in
Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra and the Scherzo from
Tchaikovsky's Fifth, the brazen brass in
Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor and the Great Gates of Kiev from
Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, or the brilliant ensemble in
Respighi's tone poems and
Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. But the best thing is that
Ormandy and the
Philadelphia do not use their astounding virtuosity to show off their technique; they use it to show off the music. Even in obvious virtuoso pieces like the
Bach transcriptions,
Ormandy and the
Philadelphia play the music with polish and precision, but they do not overwhelm it with panache and passion. Superbly remastered, this 10-disc set will be mandatory for fans of the Fabulous
Philadelphia, and likely fascinating for those who do not already know its work.