Features: The Unfinished Symphony
Increasingly, during the last of the Ormandy years, the musicians in the orchestra seemed to be giving, well, workmanlike performances. "Familiarity breeds, if not contempt, then indifference," says Thor Eckert Jr., music critic
for the Christian Science Monitor. Many careful listeners feel that the persistently conservative programming had a debilitating effect on the orchestra’s members, who could no longer bring a fresh spirit to music they had played so many times before.
As the Ormandy era came to a close in 1980, says the Chicago Tribune’s John VonRhein, the critics felt that the orchestra "had become a sleek machine that Was put on automatic pilot" for concerts.
Some listeners began to say openly that the orchestra’s many commitments outside of Philadelphia were affecting the quality of hometown performances. Most notably, the summertime concerts at the Robin Hood Dell — and, more recently, at the Mann Music Center — were cited as examples of less-than-first-rate musicianship. Even Fredric R. Mann, benefactor of the summer concerts, added his voice to that of the critics. The Mann Center performances, he said, had become nothing more than rehearsals for the orchestra’s long-standing August concert series at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.
A few assessments of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s problems have gone beyond simply blaming the ennui created by tired programming. Ormandy was losing his hearing and suffering memory lapses. Others wondered if the conductor was losing control of both his musicians and his music. The maestro, though possibly more distressed by such charges than he let on, denied them vehemently. Nonetheless, during 1979, Ormandy’s penultimate season as music director, the rumors and whispers persisted. "The jackals are out," said Seymour Rosen, then-executive director of the orchestra. Whatever the reason for the problems, outsiders began to notice the trouble. Says Richard Dyer, classical-music critic for the Boston Globe, "It was widely perceived that the technical standard of the orchestra had slipped."
