Philadelphia's real maestro

The term

Philadelphia Sound

conjures for many the lush arrangements and piercing horns of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff tunes from the 1970s. For fans of classical music, however, the silky strings of the Philadelphia Orchestra define the city's namesake sound. Consider the story of the man who did much to perfect it: Eugene Ormandy.

Born Jeno Blau in Budapest, Ormandy (1899-1985) was given a tiny fiddle at age 3. Two years later, he enrolled as a violinist in the Hungarian capital's Royal State Academy of Music before becoming its youngest graduate, at age 14.

Ormandy arrived in the United States in 1921, lured by the prospect of a $30,000 concert tour. The scheduled performances fell through shortly thereafter, and Ormandy, strapped for cash, auditioned as a violinist at a silent-movie palace with its own symphony orchestra. Within a week, the recent immigrant traveled from last chair to concertmaster. Soon Ormandy was its conductor.

"I'm one of the boys," he later avowed, "no better than the last second violinist. We are all musicians. I'm just the lucky one to be standing in the center, telling them how to play."

A string of gigs followed: conductor for the CBS radio network, the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, and others.

Ormandy began his association with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1931 as the last-minute replacement for an ill maestro. He was asked to become the orchestra's co-conductor six years later, sharing the bill with the legendary Leopold Stokowski.

The two men had little in common.

"Stokowski was once asked to explain the similarities in music-making between himself and Ormandy, and he said, 'We both like apple strudel,' " Sol Schoenbach, a bassoonist who had played under both men, recalled in a 1978 Pennsylvania Illustrated profile.

But if Stokowski had put the Philadelphia Orchestra on the map, Ormandy made it a landmark. Cool and conservative to Stokowski's fiery and flamboyant, Ormandy assumed the orchestra's principal conductorship in 1941. Under his direction, the orchestra would become the most traveled and most recorded American symphonic organization.

The first orchestra to appear on television (1948) and to travel to the People's Republic of China (1973), the orchestra under Normandy was responsible for introducing the "Philadelphia Sound" to millions across the country and around the world. So busy was the orchestra that it became the first in the United States to offer its players a full 52-week contract, a rare slice of financial security for Ormandy's 105 "musical children."

But what exactly was the "Philadelphia Sound" that drew listeners far from the City of Brotherly Love, and was it due to Ormandy or Stokowski?

"Any orchestra is the reflection of its conductor, and the Philadelphia Orchestra is Mr. Ormandy's masterwork," reported the Los Angeles Times critic Albert Goldberg. ". . . One cannot conceive of the Philadelphia Orchestra without him."

When the question was put to him, Ormandy would often respond: "C'est moi."

Ormandy officially left the orchestra as conductor in 1980, marking the end of his 44-year tenure, the longest by an American conductor. He continued as conductor laureate until his death in 1985.

On Wednesday, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania is hosting "Philadelphia: City of Music," a program exploring the city's 300-plus-year musical legacy. Visit hsp.org/Music for more information.