www.eugeneormandy.com had been hacked into some months back, and a blank template had been installed on the homepage.  Unfortunately, the homepage had been lost, but we were able to pull the old one off  a computer long ago retired.  Thanks for your patience and please accept our apologies for the inconvenience.

Robert L. Jones
Helotes, Texas
7 February 2006

After September 11, 2001, I had to drop my responsibilities as editor of the Eugene Ormandy Web Pages.  As a member of the U.S. Army National Guard, I have been deployed twice since that horrifying event, and have put in untold hours as a guardsman making sure my units were mission ready.  It was a privilege serving with so many great people in the Army, and I would not have traded the honor of serving my country for anything in the world. 

God bless those troops who are out there in the sand, the mechanics in the motor pool, the medics in the CASH hospitals, the ground crews in our Air Force and the hardworking petty officers in the Navy.  As a Army newspaperman these past four years, I have gotten to know and knock back a few cold ones with them all, and admire their tenacity of purpose and the professionalism they bring to the mission to make it all look so easy.  The best part of serving with these gung-ho soldiers was the utter lack of whining you hear among them compared with the civilian world. I learned a lot about being an NCO by working with the finest Marine First Sergeant I've ever known, a gentleman's gentleman, now Army Staff Sergeant Andrew Scott.  Working with Specialist Marimer Navarrete, a journalist from the Spanish-language daily Hoy in New York City, was an education in itself and I think I've become a better journalist as a result.

One of those was my dear wife, Myung-Soo, who went to Iraq as a U.S. Air Force surgeon, helping to put our troops back together again -- physically and otherwise -- and hanging out with the Italian army soldiers and carabinieri, who made sure she had plenty of pasta and marinara sauce.

So, now we're both back in Texas, on a hiatus of sorts: I am out of the Army and about to go into the Naval reserves; Myung is working as a surgeon in a military hospital in the Alamo City.

In the meanwhile, I'll do what I can to bring this website back up to speed. Big thanks go to Mikito Ichikawa for keeping the spirit of Ormandy and his orchestra alive with his weekly reports and recording reviews.  Most important were his irreplaceable contributions to BMG Japan's three commemorative CD series, marking the 100th anniversary of Ormandy's birth. Few others have done as much as he when it comes to promoting the legacy of Eugene Ormandy and his peerless first chair soloists.  Thanks for watching my six, Mikito! 

As we commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Maestro Ormandy's passing, we can finally take some comfort that his great orchestra is being remolded into an ensemble worthy of his legacy.  After a decade under the lackluster baton of Wolfgang Sawallisch, new life is now coursing through the veins of the orchestra players as they labor under their new Musical Director, the engaging Christoph Eschenbach.

Perhaps the orchestra's temporary decline was inevitable:  After almost seven decades under the combined leadership of Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy, the staid powers-that-be that ran the orchestra board in Philadelphia imagined they were preserving the integrity of the orchestra through constantly throwing obstacles in the path of Riccardo Muti, who commited the unpardonable sin of not being Eugene Ormandy.
But even Ormandy recognised the need for the orchestra to go in a new direction, which is why he unreservedly chose Muti to be his successor.  After Muti left under a cloud in the early 1990s, the orchestra went into a tailspin that took them ten years to get out of.  The orchestra lost its recording contract with EMI. Muti deserved better, and so did Philadelphia's music lovers.

I have heard Eschenbach conduct.  No, he's not Ormandy.  Nor is he Stokowski or Muti.  But, he is his own man. He has brought -- through his musical scholarship and enthusiasm -- a unique and powerful sound back to the Philadelphia Orchestra.  It's all his own doing, and I would rank Eschenbach and his orchestra right up there with Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony.  Classical music lovers can start talking about a "Philadelphia Sound" once again.  Mr. Ichikawa informs me that Eschenbach and the orchestra will soon be releasing CD recordings.

Many editorial changes are planned for this website.  Firstly, I am proud to announce that all of these pages will soon be uploaded at www.eugeneormandy.com.  I hope the transition will be a smooth one.  The old site will still remain posted until we work out all the bugs at this end.

As the Eugene Ormandy Web Pages enter a new chapter, I will be regretfully be closing the Sergei Rachmaninoff Web Pages and the Jean Sibelius Web Pages.  Large selections of each will be archived under this site, but time does not permit me to devote the attention these sites deserve.  If any of  this site's readers would like to assume editorship of these sites, please send me an e-mail.

In bringing this site back to life after four years in limbo, I thought it would be a fitting tribute to post a review of one of Isaac Stern's electric collaborations with Ormandy and the Philadelphians, the Brahms D-Major Violin Concerto.  Shortly after the  September 11 attacks on America by fanatical Islamists, Mr. Stern quietly passed away on 22 September 2001.  Because of the torrent of news stories about the attack's aftermath and the search for survivors at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Isaac Stern's death went almost unnoticed amid all the media confusion.  For lovers of great music, Stern's death was just as tragic.  For without him we would have lost Carnegie Hall, an American landmark just as beloved as the twin towers or the Pentagon. 

Once more, I thank all the readers who kept the faith, and hope to live up to your expectations of what this website should be:  A place to reminisce about, celebrate and honor the memory of Eugene Ormandy.

Robert L. Jones
San Antonio, Texas
5 May 2005