Hail Ormandy: The Great Sibelian

One of the tragic blunders of the classical recording industry was the failure to record Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in all of Jean Sibelius's orchestral music during the stereophonic heyday of Ormandy's directorship of the Philadelphia Orchestra from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.  For Ormandy was an expert Sibelian, who began making distinguished recordings of this composer's music during the 78 rpm and mono-LP eras, and whose recordings earned the encomia of the composer.  (Of course, there are reports that Sibelius was so eager to have his music recorded that he hailed every recording, no matter what, so the significance of this point may be overstated.)

In any event, Columbia Records, with whom Ormandy/Philadelphia recorded through the early stereo years, considered Bernstein their main Sibelian and recorded him in the complete symphonies with the New York Philarmonic.  Those are fine recordings, but I think the handful of pieces that Columbia allowed Ormandy to record with his Philadelphians have a special quality worth hearing, a richness that compares favorably with the leaner sonorities of the NY Philharmonic, and a stricter devotion to forward movement than the more romanticized approach of Bernstein.

I remember as a young classical record collector during that period having generally avoided the recordings that Ormandy and the Philadelphians made after they were dropped by Columbia and started recording with RCA.  The word in the record review magazines was that RCA had a hard time figuring out how to record the Philadelphia Orchestra effectively, insisting on bringing recording sessions back to the Academy of Music from the various unconventional venues where Columbia had been recording them due to the acoustical problems of making decent-sounding recordings in the Academic auditorium when it was empty of an audience.  Those first RCA recordings were reputedly sonic disasters.  Then in the mid-1970s the word was out that Ormandy was superannuated and sleeping through recording sessions, so I wasn't likely to buy those RCA recordings, even if they had solved the acoustical problems.  And finally, in his last few years at the helm of the orchestra, RCA dropped the Philadelphians, and there were a handful of EMI recordings, including Sibelius's Lemminkainen Suite and some Hindemith.  I ended up buying these recordings due to good reviews as well as my long-standing desire to have an Ormandy recording of Lemminkainen, having grown up with a mono Columbia LP that they had made which was in my father's small LP collection.   I don't think that excellent mono recording has ever surfaced on CDs and it should be a prime candidate for a historic reissue from somebody, although EMI has kept its recording in the catalogue and it features some spectacular playing and sound.

What brings on all this chatter is that I've discovered that Arkivmusic.com has been reissuing Ormandy's RCA Sibelius recordings, licensing them from SONY BMG in their current Japanese incarnations.  They offered as a weekend special last week the recording of the 4th and 7th Symphonies with Pohjola's Daughter and The Oceanides.  Pohjola's Daughter was a famous Bernstein/NYP recording, made as filler for their single-LP release of the 5th Symphony, and so celebrated that Columbia never let Ormandy record it during that prime period in the early 1960s when they made other Sibelius tone poem recordings. (Indeed, a SONY Essential Classics series Sibelius tone poem release from the 1990s featured Ormandy's 1960's recordings of various Sibelius tone poems but interspersed the Bernstein Pohjola, confirming my undertstanding that they never let Ormandy record it back then.)  So I was curious to hear those glorious Philadelphia strings in the 4th and Pohjola and decided to buy this new Arkivmusic release. 

The program notes in the booklet are in Japanese (c'mon Arkivmusic, why bother?) but the identifying material is in English, showing that by the mid to late 1970s RCA had given up on the Academy of Music as a recording site and was using the Scottish Rite Cathedral.  And this recording sounds incredibly good.  Ormandy's 4th is powerful stuff, the Philadelphia strings come through in high style in these recordings made in the period 1975-1978, and the remastering has great presence and a relatively quiet background.  The woodwinds come through with startling clarity and the winds are well balanced with the strings.  If Ormandy was sleeping during this recording session, you could have fooled me.  The 7th is also strong, as are the tone poems.  Ormandy's approach, despite his age, strikes me as more akin to Toscanini, from whom a broadcast of the 4th Symphony survives, than Bernstein.  Ormandy was a true Toscanini disciple, in the sense that he valued the forward motion of the music and tended to avoid distending the tempo to make interpretive points.  This led some to consider Ormandy a bland and too-fast conductor, but I've found that his readings of much of the core repertory stand up over time due to their technical proficiency, rhythmic liveliness, and gorgeous sound.  I don't find them "faceless" at all.

This Sibelius reissue discovery led me back to Arkivmusic.com to find that they have also licensed two other Ormandy Sibelius recordings from RCA, the 1st Symphony and the 5th Symphony, each accompanied by other orchestral pieces.  Due to the celebrity of Bernstein's Columbia recording of the 5th, Ormandy was not given an opportunity to record it by Columbia in stereo, but RCA made up for it, and I can't wait to hear this one, as well as the Karelia Overture and Suite.  I have Ormandy's Columbia 1st Symphony but will be interested to hear it in the mid-1970s incarnation.  So, orders placed with Arkivmusic.com, and thanks for their initiative in making these recordings available. 

Now, will somebody license, digitize and release that old recording of the Lemminkainen Suite from the mono LP era?   And are there any recordings by Ormandy of the 3rd and 6th Symphonies?  Did RCA fill the gap left by Columbia and make recordings of all the major Sibelius pieces with Ormandy/Philadelphia during the mid-1970s.  I would love to hear them if they exist.