Eugene Ormandy

Eugene Ormandy is not a so old historical musician, but he had a highly sophisticated and accomplished musical talent for conducting orchestra like other historical musicians. Most of his activity was almost devoted to the USA, but his sense of harmony was largely different from other American musicians, and it was rather close to European tone.

He recorded tremendously large number of works from very small popular pieces to huge-scale master works with his Philadelphia Orchestra. All recordings were made in surprisingly high level, keeping perfect harmony all through their performance. This may be very scarce case even for so-called great conductors. Willem Mengelberg would have recorded like Ormandy, if Mengelberg mainly lived in Stereo era.

When I came across the recording of R. Strauss' "Der Buerger als Edelmann--Suite," their ultra-high standard overwhelmed me. It proves that Ormandy was one of the top conductors in history, and his understanding of R. Strauss was highly accomplished even compared with Krauss and Boehm. At the same time, this success indicates that Ormandy is a reliable expert of German music. As a matter of fact, his Beethoven is most recommendable for all listeners.

For detail information of Ormandy, I recommend you to stop by the following web pages provided by Japanese Ormandy lovers.

Pages by Mr. Yokota. He prepares pages written in English, too, His discography is very valuable.
Pages by Mr. Endou. His paged are all written in Japanese, but his discussion of Ormandy is worthy of reading. His recommendation is also wonderful.
Page by Mr. Robert L. Jones. He writes appreciation of Ormandy with fine links. You will enjoy an essay from a point of view of an American.