A Transformation in Philadelphia

By Michael Walsh.

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."

On a visit to New York City's Carnegie Hall last week, Muti offered a program that exemplified the merits of such an approach. Three obscure vignettes written around the turn of the century by Italian Composer Giuseppe Martucci, chips off the old Puccinian block, got glowing, almost impressionistic ; readings. By contrast, Richard Wernick's new Violin Concerto had a hard, steely edge. Although the work proved to be much strenuous ado about nothing, it was energetically performed by the Philadelphians and Soloist Gregory Fulkerson. Finally, Dvorak's undeservedly neglected Fifth Symphony received a taut performance that, among other virtues, was notable for the breathtaking precision of the strings. Two days later in Philadelphia, Muti took an Apollonian view of Berlioz's sprawling "dramatic symphony," Romeo et Juliette, featuring Soprano Jessye Norman and Bass-Baritone Simon Estes. For all its splendor, however, the performance could have used more intensity and less Gallic detachment.

Indeed, Muti can be emotionally chilly, even icy in his interpretations. A believer in the primacy of the printed musical score, Muti brooks no interpolations in his concert versions of Verdi operas, like last October's Rigoletto, which adhered rigorously to a new scholarly edition of the opera, or his 1983 Macbeth. This unsmiling view of what were once popular entertainments, steeped in a popular idiom, is at odds with the spirit of the composer he professes to serve. And in recasting the sound of the orchestra in line with today's international ideal -- brighter, crisper, sharper -- he has rendered it almost interchangeable with other crack ensembles, such as the Chicago Symphony and the London Symphony.

"I didn't take the orchestra with the idea that I didn't like the playing and would change everything," explains Muti. "Maybe the people who think that the orchestra has lost its soul are those who wanted it to remain the same way forever. This has been a great orchestra from the time of Stokowski. But Stokowski's personality was much different from Ormandy's, and it is natural that with the change of the conductor, the orchestra, having another experience, will also change. When I took the orchestra, my purpose was not to destroy the past but to continue the chain."

Ormandy, it is true, held on too long, and the Philadelphia musicians have embraced Muti so warmly in part because he is not Ormandy. But an edifice that took more than four decades to erect should not lightly be dismantled. For all the talk of versatility, it ought to be remembered that the two best orchestras in the world, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic, have an instantly identifiable signature that distinguishes every note they play. Should Muti ultimately find a way to merge Ormandy's legacy of a personalized voice with his own formidable strengths, then the chain will truly be continued.

With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/New York and Deborah Price/Philadelphia