# Ormandy Conducts Sibelius



## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

This week's _Vinyl's Revenge_ post is the first of two Tuesday musings featuring the symphonies o Jean Sibelius.

It is fair to say that Eugene Ormandy had the good fortune of performing the music of some great Late Romantic compsers he had the pleasure of meeting himself: Bela Bartok, Sergey Rachmaninov, and Jean Sibelius figure especially in his repertoire.

Eugene Ormandy talks about Sibelius:



> Meeting Sibelius for the first time, I had the impression of being in the presence of someone almost superhuman. Here was a being I had admired and looked up to all my life - and suddenly I was in his presence. He was a towering man, a towering personality, with a magnificent head and powerful face. His beautiful home was full of records, many of which we had sent him from America throughout the years.
> 
> Sibelius' First Symphony was the "first" for me in another sense - it was the first of the master's symphonies I ever conducted. This was in 1932, with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra - and we recorded it for RCA Victor in that year. I think perhaps it was the first Sibelius symphony to be recorded outside of Scandinavia. Of course the great Finnish conductor, Sibelius' friend Kajanus, had broken ground for Sibelius years before, and so had Koussevitzky, Stokowski and Beecham. I have played the First Symphony many times in the intervening thirty years, and it never loses its fascination for me. Recordings have changed a great deal since 1932, and so have interpretations of his works to the end, and he always had admiration for the work of my colleagues Stokowski and Koussevitzky. I will risk immodesty to add that he praised my readings too. His enthusiasm is a source of great pride to me.


The below YouTube link is a compilation of Sibelius symphonies recorded by Ormandy for RCA, one of which featuring the First Symphony I own in my vinyl collection and share on the specific Archive link.

Happy Listening!








*Jean SIBELIUS (1865-1957)*
Symphony No.1 in E Minor, Op.39 
Valse Triste, from Kuolema, Op. 44 
The Swan of Tuonela, Op. 22 no. 2

Philadelphia Orchestra
Eugene Ormandy, conducting

RCA Red Seal - ARL1-4901
Format:	Vinyl, LP, Album
Released:	1984

_Discogs _- https://www.discogs.com/release/522...Symphony-No1-Valse-Triste-The-Swan-Of-Tuonela

_YouTube_ - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nCCc0UMIzJsGCuxcC78ieV1KBl6xT46K8

_Internet Archive_ - https://archive.org/details/symphony-no-1-in-e-minor-op.-39-iv.


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