When Conductor Eugene Ormandy first announced the trip to England, wise guys in his Philadelphia Orchestra cracked, "Oh yeah?" They had been hearing about such tours for years, and the trips never came off. No big U.S. orchestra had been to Europe since Arturo Toscanini toured with the New York Philharmonic-Symphony in 1930—and lost $250,000 doing it. Last week, to the wise guys' surprise, they were actually barnstorming through Britain.
Britain liked what it heard. Birmingham's packed-house response to the first of the Philadelphia's 28 British concerts was as good a prescription for ailing Conductor Ormandy as the half-pound of U.S. beef...
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