Ernest Robles replies to Robert Stumpf:

>> Well, he gutted the Philadelphia Orchestra of its rich Stokowski-Ormandy
>> sound...I found his interpretations hectic at best...he seemed to play
>> all of the notes and miss the music...I avoid any recordings of his...
>
> I'm not sure that's a negative.  Toward the end of his tenure, Ormandy's
> Philadelphia was best at playing Tchaikovsky and, let's see...Tchaikovsky
> and, oh yeah, Tchaikovsky.  Muti, I think, recorded a very credible
> Beethoven cycle, better than Ormandy's.  The 7th is particularly good.
> The Sacre he did still works for me, too.

I've never understood the preference for bland Beethoven over fine
Tchaikovsky.  And you're being terribly unfair to Ormandy, who had one
of the finest recordings of the Beethoven Fourth Concerto, as well as
an affinity for Berlioz and the neoclassic Moderns.

Steve Schwartz

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