For almost a half-century, the sound of the Philadelphia Orchestra under Conductor Eugene Ormandy was one of the most gloriously distinctive in music. Inheriting a spirited ensemble from his flamboyant predecessor, Leopold Stokowski, Ormandy refined it until the strings turned to silk, the woodwinds to amber, the brass to gold. If Ormandy's interpretations of safe repertory standards such as Beethoven and Brahms symphonies were not always individual, the ravishing tonal beauty of his orchestra was often reward enough. "The Philadelphia sound -- it's me!" Ormandy said proudly, and it was less a boast than a statement of fact.
After an extraordinary 44-year tenure, the Hungarian-born Ormandy was succeeded in 1980 by Italian Conductor Riccardo Muti, now 44. Musical standards had slipped during Ormandy's last years, but under Muti things began to change. Out went the creamy, homogenized textures Ormandy had favored; in their place came a greater technical precision and attention to style in a vastly widened repertory. Out also went the monogamous relationship Ormandy and the city had enjoyed. Muti, conductor laureate of London's Philharmonia Orchestra, declared that Philadelphia would have to share his services with other leading musical organizations; indeed, later this year he will also become director of Milan's La Scala opera house. Muti even voiced the heretical notion that the orchestra should abandon its historic home, the Academy of Music, and build a larger hall, better equipped for television and more acoustically suitable to symphonic music. By the time Ormandy died at 85 last March, the Philadelphia sound he had nurtured for so long had practically ceased to exist.
Today the inevitable cries of alarm from Main Line Philadelphians have generally subsided. The orchestra has won widespread praise for transforming itself from a hidebound institution into a more flexible, even innovative ensemble. Still, some listeners ask: At what price? Along with its former way of playing, has the orchestra also shed its soul? The musicians say no. In fact, they sing their conductor's praises so enthusiastically that they are referred to in musical circles, only half jokingly, as "Muti's Moonies." "Muti has been touched by God," says Concertmaster Norman Carol, who has held the post for 20 years. "He has given us all new musical life." Music Critic Daniel Webster of the Philadelphia Inquirer agrees. "Ormandy had an idea of how an orchestra should sound, and he made all music sound the same," he says bluntly. "This orchestra could never play Mozart, Haydn or Beethoven under Ormandy. It always sounded like molasses."
Undeniably, Muti has revitalized the orchestra. "This is one of the very few orchestras in the world that can do all kinds of music with great achievement," says the conductor. "Now, when the orchestra performs four different pieces, it sounds like four different orchestras."