Eugene Ormandy

Sony Classical revisits Eugene Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra’s early Columbia recordings with a massive 120-disc box set, The Columbia Legacy.  This will be the second-largest box in Sony Classical history after the complete Arthur Rubinstein set of 142 CDs released in 2011.  The Columbia Legacy is dedicated to Ormandy’s mono recordings made for Columbia through 1957; his subsequent stereo albums beginning in 1958 number over 200.  While Columbia parent Sony has released various boxes of Ormandy material over the years, this is the first large-scale effort to chronologically collect all of his Columbia recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Philadelphia “Pops” Orchestra in order.  The set is in “original album” format, and Sony has also retained the material from the original albums even when Ormandy wasn’t conducting; hence, the inclusion here of a number of recordings conducted by Andre Kostelanetz, Bruno Walter, George Szell, and others.  The hefty box contains a hardcover book of around 200 pages with an introduction, historical essay, credits/discography for all discs, composers/work index, photographs, and memorabilia; all told, the box weighs in at nearly 13 pounds.