The Columbia Stereo Collection

Description

The new Ormandy/Philadelphia stereo box set from Sony Classical is filled with familiar and unfamiliar works by virtually every known composer (and many forgotten figures), spanning centuries and covering the stylistic range from Bach (the sons as well as the father) to Beethoven, Berlioz, Borodin, Bartók and beyond. It would be impossible (and pointless) to list them all. The new collection includes many CD premieres. Among them, Ormandy's complete 1958 recording: Ormandy's complete 1958 recording of Debussy's *Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien* with soprano Hilde Gueden and Vera Zorina as narrator; Bach's Mass in B minor and Brahms's Requiem from 1962; as well as symphonies by Haydn and other works by Borodin, Glinka, Wagner, Poulenc, Casella, and American composers such as Yardumian, Barati, Rochberg, and Dello Joio. In 1963, Ormandy and the Philadelphians made the first American recording of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony. Reviewing Ormandy's stereo discography on Columbia, the ClassicsToday critic recently praised his "voluptuous" *Scheherazade*, his "remarkable Vaughan Williams Fantasia on 'Greensleeves'", his Bach transcriptions ("Wonderfully realized, they highlight Ormandy's gifts as a Bach arranger after Stokowski, an important part of his legacy"), and his particular affinity for Russian music, notably "his glorious Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony and Serenade for Strings, his magnificent Rachmaninoff Second Symphony, and his classic Shostakovich Cello Concerto with Rostropovich coupled with an excellent First Symphony." The composer himself attended those sessions and was dazzled by the conductor and the orchestra. These are essential recordings. Ormandy was also known in his lifetime as the finest concerto accompanist, and this coupling of the Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn violin concertos shows that his cordial collaboration with Isaac Stern works at the highest level.