Every year on Richard Yardumian’s birthday, I reflect on my days in community radio. I remember well playing his music from vinyl during my apprentice years, and I wonder at how those recordings – by the Philadelphia Orchestra, no less – have somehow dropped off the face of the planet.

Yardumian served as the orchestra’s composer-in-residence from 1949 to 1964. During that period, Philly gave first performances of no less than ten of his works, beginning with “Desolate City” in 1945. Eugene Ormandy recorded six of them. The music is attractive, well-crafted, and often deeply felt, with insights into the composer’s spiritual convictions and Armenian heritage.

Okay, maybe there was no financial incentive for Sony to reissue recordings of a dimly-recollected “niche” composer, when Ormandy’s “Scheherazade” continues to rake it in no matter how many times it is re-released. Then why not license the Yardumian recordings to another label?

In the 1990s, Albany Records briefly revived some of Ormandy’s lesser-known American classics – among them, works by the equally neglected Louis Gesensway and John Vincent – so my hopes were high that I would finally be able to acquire Yardumian on CD. Alas, the series petered out after only three volumes.

Well, after nearly 35 years in radio, it appears my thinly-worn patience is finally about to be rewarded, as I only just learned of an impending box set on Sony Classical (the modern incarnation of Columbia Records) that is to comprise the orchestra’s complete mono recordings made under Ormandy from 1944 to 1958.

This will include all the staples, of course – Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, and Sibelius – but also much American music, including everything on the Albany series, but also recordings of Norman Dello Joio, Roy Harris, Leon Kirchner, William Schuman, and another composer closely associated with the orchestra, Harl McDonald. None of these have ever before been officially reissued.

Interestingly, Virgil Thomson’s “Five Blake Songs” is also listed, which would suggest the set will include even the long-suppressed “The Little Black Boy.”

In all, 152 of the recordings are said never to have appeared on compact disc. Philadelphia was responsible for some of the works’ first U.S. performances. Some of them were world premieres. There are simply too many highlights and curios to itemize. The list of vocal and instrumental soloists is also self-recommending.

On the one hand, it makes me happy to know I will finally be able to access so many of these recordings easily in pristine copies. On the other, I realize that the value of my LP collection continues to plummet.

The set, EUGENE ORMANDY/THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA: THE COLUMBIA LEGACY, runs to 120 CDs and will be issued on April 9!

You can find the press release, with more information, here:

https://www.jensenartists.com/single-post/sony-classical-releases-eugene-ormandy-and-the-philadelphia-orchestra-the-columbia-legacy