Penn Library

Eugene Ormandy
A Centennial Celebration

Curated by Marjorie Hassen
Otto E. Albrecht Music Library
University of Pennsylvania

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Collaborator par excellence


Beverly Sills and Eugene Ormandy
Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Saratoga Springs, New York, August 1975
Photographer: Allen J. Winigrad

Ormandy was unsurpassed as an accompanist to the many soloists with whom he and the Orchestra performed. Along with his prodigious memory and his legendary intonation, the conductor's sensitivity to the nuances of a soloist's interpretation was incomparable. He has been described as an intuitive conductor who possessed the ability to anticipate the inner-most thoughts of a soloist and, in the words of the pianist Van Cliburn, "a collaborator par excellence."


Andrés Segovia in rehearsal with Ormandy
and the Philadelphia Orchestra
Academy of Music, Philadelphia, 1968
Photographer: Adrian Siegel

Pinchas Zukerman in concert with Ormandy
and the Philadelphia Orchestra
Academy of Music, Philadelphia, 25 January 1975
Photographer: Adrian Siegel


Emil Gilels
1955
The inscription reads: "To a wonderful director and friend, Eugene Ormandy, the first colleague of my concertwork in America, 8 October 1955."

Philadelphia was the initial stop for Emil Gilels on his first American tour in 1955. He played Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto on 3 October and repeated the program the following evening at Carnegie Hall. Howard Taubman wrote in The New York Times that "one would have thought that soloist and conductor had played the work together at least 50 times."


Van Cliburn



Artur Rubinstein



Fritz Kreisler

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