On this day: Nov. 18, 1899, Eugene Ormandy was born in Budapest, Hungary.
His given name was Jeno Blau, in honor of the great Hungarian violinist Dr. Jeno Hubay.Hubay became Ormandy’s teacher and had a “profound effect” on Ormandy’s orchestras, according to the Pennsylvania Center for the Book.
When he was 5, Ormandy was accepted as a student in what is now the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest.
By the time he was 17, he was a European violin virtuoso.
He moved to the U.S. for a solo career in 1921.
But the solo tour he’d signed on for never materialized, so he began playing in an orchestra and eventually became a conductor.
He started with the Capitol Theatre Orchestra, then onto a radio orchestra and the Minneapolis Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Eugene Ormandy served as the conductor of the latter for 40 years.
A tenure that was unprecedented among 20th-century American conductors.
