The Fabulous Philadelphian: Eugene Ormandy: 1899-1985

For the conductor of one of the country’s greatest orchestras, he cut a decidedly unglamorous figure. “I’m one of the boys, no better than the last second violinist,” he would say with typical self-effacement. “I’m just the lucky one to be standing in the center, telling them how to play.” His businesslike podium manner and his reliable but unspectacular interpretations of the standard repertory caused many to underestimate him. But in 44 years, the longest music directorship in American history, Eugene Ormandy led the Philadelphia Orchestra to a height of tonal splendor that was the joy of his adopted city and the despair of orchestras everywhere else.

Ormandy’s death last week of pneumonia at 85 closed an important chapter of American orchestral history. Before jet travel, conductors routinely spent years in one city, patiently establishing performance traditions; by contrast, a modern music director may lead two or three orchestras at once, allocating only a few weeks a year to each. “This new crop of conductors is marvelously talented, and so eager to make a success in two minutes,” Ormandy once said. “There is a very famous one who wants one leg in Berlin, one in London, one hand in Florence, the other in Paris. It can be done, of course, but you must, in the end, belong to one orchestra.” Without question, Ormandy belonged to Philadelphia. Even after he made way for Riccardo Muti in 1980, he remained active as a guest conductor.

When he took over in 1938, the stocky, diminutive (5-ft. 5-in.) Hungarian- born conductor (real name: Jeno Blau) was an unlikely candidate for a daunting task. His father, a Budapest dentist and an amateur violinist, put a fiddle in his son’s hands when the child was four, and for a time Ormandy seemed destined for the life of a touring virtuoso. Stranded in America after a promised concert tour failed to materialize, he was nearly penniless when he drifted into New York City’s Capitol Theater and landed a job in the pit orchestra in 1921. Within a week he was named concertmaster; three years later he made his conducting debut leading a shortened version of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. Blessed with a nearly flawless memory and perfect pitch, Ormandy rose quickly. In 1931 he scored a triumph with the Philadelphia Orchestra when he substituted for Arturo Toscanini, which led to five seasons as conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony. In 1936 he returned to Philadelphia for two years as co-conductor with the mercurial Leopold Stokowski.

Stokowski had molded the orchestra into a peerless instrument that he controlled with finger-tip accuracy. Ormandy’s achievement was not only to preserve Stokowski’s legacy but, in some ways, to surpass it. He was no mere caretaker. If he lacked Stokowski’s restless adventurousness in presenting modern music, he nevertheless championed new works by his contemporaries Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich. If his scrupulously maintained low profile was the antithesis of Stokowski’s flamboyant showmanship, he nevertheless insisted on a uniformly high performance standard, which can be heard on the hundreds of recordings he made with the Fabulous Philadelphians. Above all, Ormandy refined and deepened his orchestra’s velvet tone to the point where he could justifiably say, “The Philadelphia sound–it’s me!”

Ormandy demanded no more of his musicians than he did of himself, which was everything. “People say to members of my orchestra, ‘How do you keep up such a demanding schedule?’ and my players–my beloved players–reply, ‘If the old man can do it, we can do it.’ That’s my philosophy,” he once said. “If the conductor gives, the orchestra gives. If the conductor rests, why should the players try?”

Welcoming Ormandy to Philadelphia, Stokowski told a banquet audience, “Of course, you must not make comparisons. Comparisons in art should never be made.” He probably meant the advice invidiously, but Ormandy’s career proved the truth of those words. His achievement is writ large in Philadelphia, and no comparison is necessary.