The Philadelphia Orchestra Essentials

The Philadelphia Orchestra has had notably few music directors since founder Fritz Scheel became its first conductor in 1900. In fact, two of them—Leopold Stokowski, who arrived in 1912, and Eugene Ormandy, who took over in 1938—helmed the orchestra for nearly 70 years, up until 1980. Together, they developed and nurtured the “Philadelphia Sound,” a lush, lively, and intense sonic signature that particularly inspired Rachmaninoff, who composed with the “Fabulous Philadelphians” in mind. Stokowski and Ormandy were also technological pioneers with a knack for marketing. Their band became the first orchestra to make electrical recordings (in 1925), perform on a commercial radio broadcast (in 1929), and appear on TV (in 1948)—and they also happened to produce the stereophonic soundtrack for Walt Disney’s dazzling animated epic Fantasia. The orchestra's hundreds of recordings (including a 120-CD box set of Ormandy's work) do well by the cream of the classical repertoire. This remarkable consistency continued into the 21st century with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who assumed the music direction of the orchestra in 2012.