(1964)

Eugene Ormandy & The Philadelphia Orchestra - The Columbia Stereo Collection 1964-1983 [94CDs Box Set] (2024)
MP3 320 Kbps | Run Time: 03:14:07:35 | 11.7 Gb
Genre: Classical | Label: Sony Classical

This massive new reissue from Eugene Ormandy’s stereo discography collects all the Columbia Masterworks recordings he made in Philadelphia between the early 1960s and early 1980s. Sony Classical’s new 94-CD box set once again demonstrates what noted critic Jed Distler, reviewing the previous instalment of this ambitious project “The Columbia Stereo Collection 1958–1963” in Gramophone’s December 2023 issue, characterized as “the Philadelphia Orchestra’s brilliance and versatility as well as Ormandy’s unflappable consistency and habitually underestimated interpretative gifts”. Some of these performances – including the complete recording of Bach’s St. John Passion, Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis, Schubert’s Sixth Symphony and a disc of opera choruses with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, as well as Ginastera’s Concerto for Strings and the ballet music from Massenet’s opera Le Cid – have never appeared before in the digital medium, and they shine a light into new corners of Ormandy’s astonishingly large repertoire.

In an odd twist on the way these things usually work, this U.K. release is a CD reissue of the Bachelors' first American album, Presenting: The Bachelors, with the addition of seven tracks that appeared on non-LP singles in 1963 and 1964 in Britain. The format might be something of an excuse to round up and repackage the Bachelors' earliest recordings, but if that's what you want, this reissue does a good job of it. The Presenting: The Bachelors LP itself only differed a little from their first U.K. album, the big difference – and one that helped the quality of the record – being the addition of "Diane," a U.K. chart-topper that was by far their biggest hit in the U.S. (where it reached the Top Ten), and its follow-up single "I Believe."