APRIL 25: Sony Classical Presents Eugene Ormandy – The RCA Victor Recordings 1935-42

Sony Classical Presents
Eugene Ormandy – The RCA Victor Recordings 1935-42

Album Release Date: April 25, 2025
Reviewer Rate Available Upon Request
Pre-Order Available Now 

16 recordings on CD for the first time ever
55 recordings for the first time on CD as authorized releases from the original masters

1931 was the breakthrough year for 32-year-old Hungarian immigrant Eugene Ormandy. First, he was engaged by the Philadelphia Orchestra to deputize for his idol Toscanini, who was briefly indisposed. Then, a few months later, he was asked to step in for the conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, also indisposed – but in this case permanently. Soon Ormandy was hired to take over that rising Midwestern orchestra. At the end of his five-year tenure in Minneapolis, which produced a considerable discography for RCA Victor (available in an 11-CD Sony Classical box set), Ormandy was called back to Philadelphia, this time to become its co-conductor with Leopold Stokowski. In 1936, he began recording regularly for Victor with his new orchestra, picking up the pace in 1938 when he became its sole music director. Sony Classical is pleased to continue its comprehensive documentation of Eugene Ormandy’s discography with a new 21-CD release of everything he set down in Philadelphia before the ban on commercial recording instigated by the musicians’ union in 1942. By the time the strike ended in 1944, Ormandy and the orchestra had moved to Columbia Masterworks. The set will be released on April 25, 2025. Pre-order is available now.

As connoisseurs have long known, these early Philadelphia albums are among the most impressive performances Ormandy set down in over 40 years at the orchestra’s helm. The first to be released – fittingly enough for a Russian music specialist – was Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” Symphony, recorded by Victor on December 13, 1936. That three-hour session in Philadelphia’s Academy of Music, the orchestra’s home, was the first of more than 400 led by Ormandy. And it was highly productive – Ormandy had a reputation as a fast worker – yielding not only the Tchaikovsky, but also two Bach arrangements by Lucien Cailliet, a Philadelphia Orchestra clarinetist and its staff arranger, the first three movements of Schumann’s Second Symphony and, most importantly, Fritz Kreisler’s arrangement of Paganini’s D major Violin Concerto, with Kreisler himself as soloist.

More Tchaikovsky followed during this early Victor stint: in 1941, Ormandy and the Philadelphians recorded the Fifth Symphony and the Nutcracker Suite. The latter’s matrices suffered from processing problems that rendered them too noisy to release until now. The orchestra’s contract, however, allowed them to re-make the recording for RCA in 1945, even though they’d already gone over to Columbia, and it has been possible to include both versions here.

Ormandy recorded Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, one of his most celebrated interpretations, in 1937, but not in the familiar Ravel orchestration that he would always use later. Having just taken over as sole conductor of the orchestra after Stokowski’s resignation, he wanted his own version of the Pictures, so he commissioned a new score from the orchestra’s house arranger, Lucien Cailliet. 

The Philadelphia Orchestra’s most famous Russian connection was with Sergei Rachmaninoff, who premièred a number of his works with them during Stokowski’s tenure. When Ormandy assumed the music directorship, he was thrilled to continue the partnership – especially as he had developed a friendship with the composer at his 1931 Minneapolis SO début concert, in which Rachmaninoff was the soloist. The partnership reached its height in late 1939 when Ormandy mounted a “Rachmaninoff Festival” at the Academy of Music and New York’s Carnegie Hall to mark the 30th anniversary of his Philadelphia Orchestra début. They also took advantage of the opportunity to record three of Rachmaninoff’s concertos for RCA, the First, Third and Fourth, legendary performances that have never been out of the catalogue and are, of course, reissued here.

At the Budapest Academy, Ormandy had studied the violin with a pupil of Brahms’s great friend Joseph Joachim – who also encouraged Ormandy as a child, so Brahms’s music was in his blood from the beginning. As a conductor, Brahms’s symphonies were at the core of his repertoire, and he gave more performances of them with the Philadelphia Orchestra than any other conductor in American musical history. He first recorded the Second with the Philadelphians anonymously for the “World’s Greatest Music” series in March 1939, and nine months later conducted a tauter, “official” version for release on RCA. Both are included here along with Ormandy’s other recordings for “World’s Greatest Music”, all made in 1938: the Mozart G minor, Beethoven’s Fifth, Schubert’s “Unfinished” and the Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 2 and 3.

Two other famous Brahms recordings from 1939 are the Alto Rhapsody with Marian Anderson and the Double Concerto with Jascha Heifetz and Emanuel Feuermann, about which Gramophone’s original reviewer wrote: “Rarely can the powers of two string players have been so fully extended, so richly proved … The whole thing is tremendous: a manifestation, for all who have an ear of the soul, of the composer’s greatness of heart and mind.”

Soloists revered Ormandy throughout his career. Said Isaac Stern: “There was not a single conductor who was a greater colleague in the making of a concerto record.” In addition to the Brahms Double and the Paganini First Concerto with Kreisler, mentioned earlier, the new Sony collection reissues the Mendelssohn and Spohr’s No. 8 with another famous violinist, Albert Spalding, and the Grieg Piano Concerto with Arthur Rubinstein: “A glittering specimen and exuberantly played … The best of the modern readings” (Gramophone).

Sibelius was another leading composer Ormandy knew personally and performed regularly – he also visited him in Finland and brought him to Philadelphia. For an album to mark the composer’s 75th birthday in 1940, he recorded three tone poems, while the next year saw a new recording of the First Symphony (Ormandy’s earlier one was made in Minneapolis in 1935), which he identified as “the first of the master’s symphonies I ever conducted”. Two further versions would follow, in 1962 (for Columbia) and in 1978 (for RCA).

Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra were Victor’s chief Richard Strauss exponents during these years, making the first electrical recording of the Symphonia Domestica in 1938, followed in 1939 by Ein Heldenleben and in 1940 by Don Quixote, with Emanuel Feuermann. Hindemith’s “Mathis der Maler” Symphony was still a new work when Ormandy recorded it in 1940, only six years after the composer introduced it with his own Berlin Philharmonic recording. Strauss family waltzes had already featured in Ormandy’s Minneapolis recordings. The three waltzes in this Philadelphia set earned praise from Gramophone in 1942: “You will enjoy the brilliance of the combinations of tone, and their balance – one of the exciting things about all the best American recordings … Here is full-voiced tonal splendour.”

American music was a prominent feature of this conductor’s repertoire – he was always eager to promote the composers of his adopted homeland. Here we find the first recording of any work by Gian Carlo Menotti, his Amelia Goes to the Ball Overture, and the earliest recording of an orchestral work by Samuel Barber, his First Essay for Orchestra, as well as pieces by Roy Harris and two Sousa marches from the orchestra’s last session before the musicians’ strike shut down commercial recording for the next three years. But not before Ormandy and his Philadelphians had amassed the treasures brought together here for the first time. 

SET CONTENTS 

DISC 1:

Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64
Spohr: Violin Concerto No. 8 in A Minor, Op. 47 "Gesangscene"
Paganini: Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 6: I. Allegro maestoso - Tempo giusto 

DISC 2:

Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21
Schumann: Symphony No. 2 in C Major, Op. 61 

DISC 3:

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74 "Pathétique"
Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker (suite), Op. 71a
Rimsky-Korsakov (arr. Ormandy): Christmas Eve, Act III: Church Scene (first release) 

DISC 4:

Mussorgsky (arr. Cailliet): Pictures at an Exhibition
Liszt: Les Préludes, S. 97
Enescu: Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 in A Major, Op. 11
Debussy (arr. O'Connell) I: Préludes, Book I, L. 117: No. 12, Minstrels (first release) 

DISC 5:

Beethoven: Ah perfido!, Op. 65 - Konzertarie für Sopran und Orchester
Weber: Oberon, Act II: "Ozean Du Ungeheuer"
Beethoven: Fidelio, Op. 72, Act I: "Abscheulicher, Wo Eilst Du Hin?"
Wagner: Die Walküre, WWV 86B, Act I: "Du bist der Lenz"
Wagner: Die Walküre, WWV 86B, Act II: "Ho-Yo-To-Ho" - Hans Lange, conductor 
Wagner: Lohengrin, WWV 75, Act I: Elsas Traum - Hans Lange, conductor 
Wagner: Lohengrin, WWV 75, Act II, Scene 2: "Euch Lüften, die mein Klagen "
Wagner: Tannhäuser, WWV 70, Act II: "Dich teure Halle, grüß ich wieder" - Hans Lange, conductor 
Wagner: Tannhäuser, WWV 70, Act III: Elisabeths Gebet - Hans Lange, conductor 
Wagner: Götterdämmerung, WWV 86D, Act III: "Starke Scheite schichtet mir dort" (Brünnhilde's Immolation)
Bach, J.S.: Cantata No. 140: Now Let Every Tongue Adore Thee
Charpentier: Louise, Act III: "Depuis le jour où je me suis donnée"
Debussy: L'enfant prodigue, L. 57: "L'année, en vain chasse l'année" 

DISC 6:

Wagner: Die Walküre, WWV 86B, Act I: Winterstürme "Spring Song"
Wagner: Siegfried, WWV 86c, Act I: "Notung! Notung! Neidliches Schwert!"
Wagner: Siegfried, WWV 86c, Act I: Schmiedelied "Hoho! Hoho! Hohei" Schmiede, mein Hammer" - Edwin McArthur, conductor
Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, WWV 96, Act I: "Am stillen Herd"
Wagner: Die Meistersinger, WWV 96, Act III: Morgenlich leuchtend "Prize Song"
Wagner: Lohengrin, WWV 75, Act III: "In fernem Land" "Lohengrin's Narrative"
Wagner: Parsifal, WWV 111, Act III: "Nur eine Waffe taugt"
Wagner: Wesendonck Lieder, WWV 91: No. 4, Schmerzen}
Wagner: Wesendonck Lieder, WWV 91: No. 5, Träume
Wagner: The Flying Dutchman, WWV 63, Act I: Steuermann Lied - Edwin McArthur, conductor
Wagner: Tannhäuser, WWV 70, Act I: "Dir töne Lob!" - Edwin McArthur, conductor
Wagner: Tannhäuser, WWV 70, Act III: Rome Narrative - Edwin McArthur, conductor
Wagner: Lohengrin, WWV 75, Act III: Mein lieber Schwan "Lohengrins Abschied und Finale"
Wagner: Parsifal, WWV 111, Act II: "Amfortas! Die Wunde!"
Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, WWV 96, Act III: "Tanz der Lehrbuben" 

DISC 7:

Strauss, R.: Sinfonia Domestica, Op. 53
Strauss, R.: Der Rosenkavalier, Suite, TrV 227d 

DISC 8:

McDonald: Symphony No. 1 "The Santa Fé Trail"
McDonald: From Childhood "Suite for Harp and Orchestra" – Harl McDonald, conductor
McDonald: Cakewalk - Scherzo from Symphony No. 4
McDonald: 3 Poems on Aramaic Themes 

DISC 9:

Vivaldi (arr. Cailliet): L'estro armonico, Op 3, No. 8: Concerto for 2 Violins in A Minor (Arr. Lucien Cailliet)
Purcell (arr. Cailliet): Suite from Dido and Aeneas
Mozart: Divertimento No. 10 in F Major for Strings and 2 Horns, K. 247
Telemann: Ouverture-Suite, TWV 55: a2
Jenkins (arr. Cailliet): Five-Part Fantasy in D Major (first release) 

DISC 10:

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 1
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Minor, Op. 40 

DISC 11:

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30
Grieg: Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16 

DISC 12:

Brahms: Concerto for Violin and Cello in A Minor, Op. 102
R. Strauss: Don Quixote, Op. 35: Fantastic Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character 

DISC 13:

Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73
Brahms: Alto Rhapsody, Op. 53 "Harzreise im Winter"
Brahms (orch. Hertz): 8 Lieder and Songs, Op. 59, No. 8: Dein blaues Auge hält so still   
Brahms (orch. Hertz): 5 Poems, Op. 19, No. 4: Der Schmied
Brahms (orch. Hertz): 5 Lieder, Op. 105: "Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer"   
Brahms (orch. Hertz): Von ewiger Liebe, Op. 43, No. 1 

DISC 14:

Strauss, R.: Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40
Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé - Suite No. 2 

DISC 15:

Sibelius: Finlandia, Op. 26
Sibelius: Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22, No. 2: The Swan of Tuonela
Sibelius: Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22, No. 4: Lemminkäinen's Return
Sibelius: Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 39 

DISC 16:

Hindemith: Mathis der Maler Symphony
Menotti: Amelia Goes to the Ball - Overture
Barber: First Essay for Orchestra, Op. 12
Harris: 3 Pieces for Orchestra
Sousa: Washington Post March
Sousa: The Stars and Stripes Forever

DISC 17:

Bach, J.S. (arr. Cailliet): Prelude and Fugue in F Minor, BWV 534 (Arranged for Orchestra by Lucien Cailliet)
Bach, J.S. (arr. Cailliet): Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring (from Cantata No. 147, BWV 147)
Bach, J.S. (arr. Cailliet): Preludio in E Major from Partita No 3 for Violin Unaccompanied, BWV 1006 – Leopold Stokowski, conductor
Bach, J.S. (arr. Cailliet): Prelude and Fugue in B Minor, BWV 544
Bach, J.S. (arr. O'Connell): St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244: Herzliebster Jesu
Strauss, Johann II: Frühlingsstimmen - Walzer, Op. 410
Strauss, Johann II: Wiener Blut Walzer, Op. 354
Strauss, Johann II: Kaiser-Walzer, Op. 437 

DISC 18:

Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker (suite), Op. 71a
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 5. in E Minor, Op. 64 

DISC 19:

Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67
Schubert: Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, D.759 "Unfinished" 

DISC 20:

Mozart: Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550
Bach, J.S.: Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major, BWV 1047
Bach, J.S.: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major, BWV 1048 

DISC 21:

Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73