Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Eugene Ormandy

Ormandy, China, and Forgotten American Music

When Eugene Ormandy took the Philadelphia Orchestra to China in September of 1973, he was sure to include, alongside Mozart and Brahms, some music from the American Heartland.

Roy Harris (1898-1979) was born in a log cabin, in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, on Lincoln’s birthday. If that doesn’t imbue a composer with a sense of destiny, I don’t know what will. Harris went on to became one of our great American symphonists. In particular, his Symphony No. 3 of 1939 has been much beloved and frequently performed. Unfortunately, we don’t hear all that much of his music anymore. And that’s a damned shame.

Philadelphia would be the first American orchestra to perform in China (the London and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras had appeared earlier the same year), having received an invitation in response to Nixon’s historic visit in 1972. According to first-hand accounts, audience reactions to the performances were difficult to decipher. On the street, people were curious, but stand-offish. Red banners and likenesses of Mao, Lenin, and Stalin festooned Tiananmen Square. The local orchestra played Western music (Beethoven), but only in rehearsal, for training purposes. In summer, musicians pruned trees.

Here are some interesting, balanced impressions, from a diary kept by one of the Philadelphians:

https://www.inquirer.com/arts/philadelphia-orchestra-china-tour-1973-mao-beijing-20190509.html

In all, the orchestra played six concerts. This was the trip on which Philadelphia performed the notorious “Yellow River Concerto,” a piano concerto written by committee and overseen by Madame Mao herself. Interesting that a country that did its damnedest to suppress decadent Western influence would shamelessly pilfer from the Western Romantics. As an encore, the pianist played a set of variations on “Home on the Range,” apparently a concession to Nixon. According to the diarist, Madame Mao did not care for “The Pines of Rome.” Mao himself was a no-show.

Also included on the programs were “The Stars and Stripes Forever” and the “Chinese Worker’s March.” Again, the Beijing audience seemed impassive. Performances were received with more enthusiasm in Shanghai.

While I haven’t been able to locate any recordings of the Chinese concerts, here’s Ormandy and the Philadelphians playing Harris in Russia in 1958. Additional American offerings included Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” and George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris,” which were played alongside Igor Stravinsky’s “The Firebird.” You can hear the tepid applause in Russia, when following the link:

If you’re interested in hearing the “Yellow River Concerto,” there are a number of performances posted on YouTube. However, the audio for the Philadelphia/Ormandy album, with Daniel Epstein – which I’ve got somewhere in my own collection – for some reason has not been posted online. If you’ve got a sweet tooth, by all means, feel free to explore. Me, I’d rather not risk a trip to the dentist’s office in time of COVID.

September 14, 2020
Leith Stevens’ Lost Piano Concerto

Hey, I’m the music guy, right?

In preparing to talk about “The War of the Worlds” on “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner” the other day, I was in the process of boning up on Leith Stevens, the film’s composer, when I stumbled across this clip. It’s a piano concerto written for “Night Song” (1948), a movie starring Dana Andrews that somehow had slipped beneath my radar. The music is performed in the film by Arthur Rubinstein, Eugene Ormandy, and the New York Philharmonic.

What’s that you say? The music is not about to win a Pulitzer? Well Rubinstein and Ormandy aren’t going win any Oscars either! (Actually, they’re not half bad.) Stevens eschews the Rachmaninoff-style movie concerto kitsch then very much in vogue. (I’m looking at you, “Warsaw Concerto.”) The trade-off, unfortunately, is a concerto that quickly faded into oblivion. More’s the pity. All in all, a fascinating document.

Ah, the good old days, when you could enjoy a cigarette in a stairwell, while dreaming about touching Merle Oberon’s face, on the beach, during a concert…

From Bosley Crowther’s review in the New York Times: “…The music, the prize concerto—well, that is really the thing which puts ‘Night Song’ in the spotlight as baldfaced and absolute sham. For this scrappy and meaningless jangle by Leith Stevens is good for nothing more than an excuse for filming the fiddles, the drums and the batteries of horns. And if Mr. Rubinstein and Mr. Ormandy can swallow it, along with their pride, they must have pretty strong stomachs.”

Ouch! Everyone’s a critic.

Crowther was later drummed out of the Times for doubling down on his hatred of “Bonnie and Clyde” in 1968.

July 20, 2020
Ormandy’s All-American Philadelphia Orchestra

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” it’s one more trip to the well, with well-played works of American composers rendered by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Slake your thirst with selections from “Five Songs of William Blake” by Virgil Thomson, the Symphony No. 7 by Roy Harris, and “Four Squares of Philadelphia” by Louis Gesensway.

Gesensway was born in Latvia in 1906. A violin prodigy, he was one of the founders of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He came to Philadelphia at the age of 19, where he played under both Stokowski and Ormandy.

In his mid-20s, he took a leave of absence to study composition with Zoltán Kodály. “Four Squares of Philadelphia” was described by the composer as a “symphonic poem for large orchestra, narrator and street criers.”

The piece opens with a recitation of William Penn’s prayer, then continues with musical evocations of Washington Square (in early morning, during Colonial times, with street criers hawking their wares), Rittenhouse Square (on a bright and cheerful afternoon), Logan Square (with its fountains at dusk), and Franklin Square (at night, evocative of noisy bridge traffic, a side excursion into Chinatown, and musical interjections from the honky tonk joints located around the square in the 1950s).

Be there or be square. Eugene Ormandy serves up the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers. I hope you’ll join me for “All-American Ormandy III,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Statue of Penn, high atop the city he founded

December 1, 2019
Ormandy’s Lost American Music Recordings

It’s not so much that I am out of ideas, but it is mighty convenient that I have so much material left over from last week’s show. Even now, I run my eye down the stack of CDs with the warm satisfaction of an acquisitive magpie.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” it’s the second installment in what is shaping up to be a three-part series of Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra in rarely-heard recordings of American music.

Samuel Barber was born in West Chester, Pa., not far from Philly, in 1910. He attended Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music and had his first orchestral work, the “School for Scandal Overture,” performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1931, when he was 21 years-old.

His “First Essay for Orchestra” was sent to Arturo Toscanini in the same mail as his “Adagio for Strings.” Toscanini performed both works with the NBC Symphony in 1938, but it was Eugene Ormandy who made the first recording of “Essay,” with the Philadelphians, in 1940.

Vincent Persichetti was born in Philadelphia in 1915, and he died there in 1987. In between, he attended Combs College of Music, the Curtis Institute (where he studied conducting with Fritz Reiner) and the Philadelphia Conservatory. He taught at Combs and the Philly Conservatory. Then he received an invitation from William Schuman (some of whose music we heard last week) to take up a professorship at Juilliard.

Persichetti was one of our great composers, but to this day he remains underappreciated, more respected than loved. His Symphony No 4 of 1951 must be one of his most immediately attractive works.

Finally, John Vincent may be the most undeservedly neglected composer in Ormandy’s entire discography. Ormandy described his recording of Vincent’s Symphony in D (“A Festival Piece in One Movement”) as “one of the best we have ever done,” and the piece itself as “one of the finest compositions created by an American composer in the past decade.” The 1954 work sounds at times like Sibelius gone to the rodeo, but my, is it good stuff!

I hope you’ll join me for “All-American Ormandy II.” Ormandy recommends a visit to the Barber (pictured), then convinces with the Vincents, this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

November 24, 2019
Ormandy’s Lost American Legacy Rediscovered

Eugene Ormandy was born Jenő Blau in Budapest in 1899. In 1927, he became a naturalized American citizen and wound up directing the Philadelphia Orchestra for 44 years.

In that capacity, he championed much contemporary music and works by his adopted countrymen – a fact eclipsed by his reputation as a superb interpreter of the 19th century classics.

In fact, much of his American legacy has dropped out of print. In the late 1990s, Albany Records attempted to rectify the situation by reissuing some of Ormandy’s recordings of lesser-heard American music. The series only made it to three volumes, but each one of them is a treasure.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear two selections from these invaluable anthologies. Both are by Pulitzer Prize winners whose music has sadly fallen out of fashion.

William Schuman was the very first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, in 1943, for his “Cantata No. 2, A Free Song.” At the height of his fame, he was also President of Lincoln Center. He was considered such an important figure in American culture, he was even brought on to “What’s My Line?” (Those were the days.)

We’ll hear Schuman’s “Credendum – Article of Faith,” composed in 1955. The work was written in response to the first ever commission by the U.S. government for a symphonic work.

Two years later, the Pulitzer was awarded to Norman Dello Joio, for his “Meditations on Ecclesiastes.” His symphonic suite “Air Power” was adapted from 22 individual scores composed for the CBS television series about the history of aviation. The series ran from November 1956 through the spring of 1957. (Dello Joio would collect his prize in April.) The individual sections were used to underscore segments on the early days of flight, with their barnstormers and daredevils, air battles and war scenes.

I hope you’ll join me for these rarely-heard recordings of American music. Ormandy flies American, on “All-American Ormandy,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

William Schuman on “What’s My Line?” (1962):

“Air Power,” narrated by Walter Cronkite (1956):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKXKTh50USM

November 17, 2019

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