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Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra reached the pinnacle of 20th century orchestral art.

These are a number of famous recordings that vividly capture the unprecedented heights reached by this famous duo in their final years.

【DISC 1】

Richard Strauss (1864-1949):

[1] Symphonic Poem “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” Op. 30

For large orchestra, freely after Friedrich Nietzsche

Introduction (Sunrise)

On the people of the future

On great longings

On rapture and passion

Song of burial

On science

On the recovery from illness

Song of dance

Night of the wanderer

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963):

Symphonic Metamorphosis on a Theme by Carl Maria von Weber (1943)

[2]I. Allegro

[3]II.“Turandot, Scherzo”, Moderato - Lebhaft

[4]III. Andantino

[5]IV. Marsch

Concert Music for Strings and Brass Instruments, Op. 50

[6]Part I : MaBig schnell, mit Kraft - Sehr breit, aber stets flieBend

[7]Part II : Lebhaft - Langsam - Im ersten ZeitmaB (Lebhaft)

【DISC 2】

Bela Bartok:

Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta Sz106

[1]I. Andante tranquillo

[2]II. Allegro

[3]III. Adagio

[4]IV. Allegro molto

The Mysterious Mandarin, Op.19, Sz73

[5]No.1: Introduction

[6]No.2: Curtain rises

[7]No.3: First temptation

[8]No.4: Second temptation

[9]No.5: Third temptation

[10]No.6: The Mandarin's entrance

[11]No.7: The girl's dance

[12]No.8: The Chase - The Men Leap Out

Jean Sibelius:

Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22 (4 Legendary Pieces, Op. 22)

[13]No.2: The Swan of Tuonela (Louis Rosenblatt, cor anglais)

[14]No.4: Lemminkäinen's Return

Samuel Barber:

[15] Adagio for Strings, Op. 11

Philadelphia Orchestra

Conductor: Eugene Ormandy

[Recording]

[Strauss] November 24, 1979, [Hindemith] February 25 & November 10, 1978, [Bartók] November 18 & 20, 1978, [Sibelius] February 20, 1978, [Barber] February 25, 1978, Philadelphia, Old Metropolitan Opera House (now The Met Philadelphia)

Strauss: Digital recording

The musical activities of the famous Hungarian conductor Eugene Ormandy (1899-1985) with the Philadelphia Orchestra, together with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, were probably the highest standard in the history of 20th century orchestras, both in terms of technique and the breadth of their repertoire.

Born in Budapest at the height of the 20th century, Ormandy began his musical career as a violinist with great promise, studying under the great Fubay. In 1921, he emigrated to the United States, where he began as a member of the Capitol Theater orchestra, and then moved on to the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. In 1938, he became the successor to Leopold Stokowski as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

He continued to work with the orchestra for the next 42 years, and under his leadership the orchestra rose to become one of the greatest in the history of 20th century orchestras.

In terms of recordings, he was also very active in the recording industry, producing a huge discography over half a century, from the era of 78rpm records to the digital era. His stereo recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra in particular are so well-loved by music fans around the world that it is no exaggeration to say that they set the standard for classical music performances in the second half of the 20th century.

The two-disc set being reissued in this series is a selection of tracks from the four albums they recorded for EMI between 1978 and 1979, and is a collection of truly historic musical masterpieces that capture the supreme heights they reached in their final years.

Since the SP era, recordings by major American orchestras have been almost exclusively handled by RCA and Columbia, the record companies of the USA.

After the Second World War, the new medium of the LP was created, and even after stereo recordings were introduced, this situation remained unchanged for a while, but from the latter half of the 1960s, European record companies began negotiations with American orchestras with the aim of expanding their market share.

EMI was the first to take the initiative, and in 1968 they recorded with the George Solti/Cleveland Orchestra in a performance with Emil Gilels, and from the following year, 1969, they began recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which was under the direction of Carlo Maria Giulini, who had a contract with EMI as the orchestra's principal conductor.

In 1970, Decca signed a contract with Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Deutsche Grammophon signed a recording contract with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the same year, and new entries continued.

EMI approached the Philadelphia Orchestra because the company's conductor Riccardo Muti, who was being promoted at the time, had been named as Ormandy's successor. The recording project itself got underway in February 1978 with an album of Sibelius and Hindemith conducted by Ormandy.

The following month, they also recorded their first recording with Muti (Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Stravinsky's The Firebird, and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7), and until Ormandy retired in 1982, EMI continued to record with these two conductors.

While Muti's recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra for EMI mainly featured Russian composers such as Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and R. Korsakov, Ormandy's recordings tended to focus on orchestral works from the 20th century, including those by R. Strauss, Sibelius, Bartok and Hindemith.

Ormandy's first recording for EMI, Sibelius's 'Four Legends' (two of which are included on this 2-CD set) was recorded in February 1978, and apart from the famous 'The Swan of Tuonela', there were no stereo recordings of the other three pieces by Ormandy, so this was the first time that all four had been recorded together since the 1951 mono recording for Columbia, and Hindemith's 'Concert Music for Strings and Brass' Bartók's “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” was also a first for Ormandy.

On the other hand, the popular R. Strauss piece “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, recorded in November 1979 and released in December 1980, was an unusual case in that it was a re-recording of a piece that had been recorded in stereo for RCA just five years previously in February 1975, and the release was made after waiting a year until it was released, just barely clearing the then-standard period of “no re-recording for five years”.

In this two-disc set, “Zarathustra” was digitally recorded, and it seems that it was deliberately chosen as a piece that could fully demonstrate the effects of new recording technology, and it can be said that it is proof that EMI was also putting a lot of effort into adopting new technology.

Ormandy was also continuing to record for RCA at this time, so he took care to avoid overlapping repertoire, but there are cases where he recorded other works by the same composer at the same time for RCA, such as the First and Fourth Symphonies by Sibelius, the Concerto for Orchestra by Bartók, and Death and Transfiguration by R. Strauss, so you can compare the differences in sonority between the labels.

These EMI recordings were made at the Old Metropolitan Opera House in Philadelphia, which was known as the “Old Met” (now used for rock and pop performances as “The Met Philadelphia”).

This was a huge theater with a capacity of 3,500 seats, built in 1908 by impresario Oscar Hammerstein I as the home of the Philadelphia Opera. It was used as an opera house until 1934, but then began to be used for other purposes, such as showing films, as a dance hall, and for sporting events such as basketball, wrestling and boxing.

In 1954, it was purchased by Leon Sullivan, a social activist and minister, who used it as a church and held various religious and cultural events there.

When EMI was looking for a new recording venue for their recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra, they looked at 14 venues in and around the city, and chose the Old Met as the result of their investigations, rather than the Town Hall (which RCA and Columbia had been using since the stereo era) or the Academy of Music, where the Philadelphia Orchestra had been holding concerts (which was renamed the Scottish Rite Cathedral in the 1970s).

The building itself was in a state of advanced deterioration, and when loud music was played, pieces of plaster would fall from the ceiling, making it a terrible place to record. However, it had a huge space, and the acoustics were wonderful, so EMI used it as a recording venue until 1984.

The sound of Ormandy's EMI recordings made at the Old Met was very different from the sound that RCA and Columbia had been aiming for up until that point.

While RCA and Columbia, to varying degrees, balanced the sonority of the entire orchestra with the clarity of the details to produce a warm sound, EMI recordings emphasized the clarity of each part over the sound of the mass, and aimed for an extremely clear sound with a pronounced edge.

The woodwinds and brass are brought into close-up so that you can hear the individual players' breathing, and the string parts, which compete with them, are also mixed at full volume, creating a huge sound image that fills the left and right speakers, as if you were listening to Ormandy himself on the podium.

It is as if you can see the movements of each part of the orchestra, and you can vividly experience the brilliance of the Philadelphia Orchestra players' playing and blowing, and you can tell that the recording repertoire was chosen with an emphasis on the interesting layering and undulations of sound (this effect is vividly demonstrated in Bartok's “Strings and Cellos”, which places two groups of orchestra on either side).

Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra also recorded for other labels besides EMI and RCA at this time, including Telarc and Delos, but the sound production of these recordings does not embody the virtuosity of this orchestra in the extreme form as the EMI recordings do.

In addition, the EMI recordings from the same period conducted by Muti are, in contrast to Ormandy's, characterized by a sound production with a sense of distance that is typical of EMI, and it is interesting to note the significant differences between the conductors.

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