Philadelphia Sound

Bench-sitting rookie infielders are better known than symphony orchestra musicians - even if the baseball team is as bad as the Phillies have been, and the orchestra is as great as the "Fabulous Philadelphians. " The Philadelphia Orchestra is observing its 100th anniversary amid well-deserved accolades - and molto uncertainty. Here's why: It will soon vacate the venerable Academy of Music and move into the not yet completed (and not yet completely funded) Center for the Performing Arts a block away.

The Philadelphia sound is like spring waters with reputed magical powers, drawing conductors increasingly to sample it. From the reactive days of the '80s when Riccardo Muti called the Philadelphia sound a public relations joke, conductors like Wolfgang Sawallisch have begun to find new glories in Leopold Stokowski's transcriptions and in the repertoire that sounded like so much silk brocade during the 44-year Ormandy era. Another believer and...

When the Philadelphia Orchestra crosses the international date line, it seems to pass under a lens that magnifies its stature until it assumes stardom before it plays a note. Japan is a notable case in point. The fever for Western classical music that swept the country after World War II shows no sign of abating. The nation consumes music at a rate that its own orchestras and soloists cannot satisfy, so it is a huge importer of orchestras and opera companies. There are Berlin Philharmonic connoisseurs, Vienna Philharmonic fan clubs, and a Philadelphia Orchestra following with increasing visibility.

A trio of silky Philadelphia soul singers sang about romance in separate groups during the 1970s heyday of the Philly Sound. To hear them sing it, love was a betcha-by-golly-wow-la-la-means-I-love-you-what's-come-over-me kind of feeling. Their signature was the tenor croon. Their sound helped define the era's music. Now, decades after topping the music charts, William "Poogie" Hart, Ted Mills and Russell Thompkins Jr. have joined voices. Their new CD, All the Way From Philadelphia, celebrates the croon and crowns the trio the "Three Tenors of Soul.

The cab driver in rainy San Francisco said it best when the passenger said he was going to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra: "They're, like, one of the best in the world, right?" Much of California seemed to think so last week as the Philadelphians worked their way south through the state on the first leg of a three-week, five-country tour. Tuesday night in San Francisco, where the tour began, the Davies Hall crowd stood and yelled for more at the end of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. "The orchestra sounds just wonderful, a real pleasure," reported Michael Tilson Thomas - "MTT" to just about everyone who knows the San Francisco Symphony music director.

A magnificent question mark has hovered in the atmosphere above the Philadelphia Orchestra since Vladimir Jurowski's debut here 15 months ago. The orchestra's relationship history with guest conductors, after all, is a curious one, littered with false leads (Roberto Abbado), mysterious disappearances (Riccardo Chailly), and a rush to judgment of some extraordinary podium talent (Ingo Metzmacher). But Thursday night, in his first performance since the one that stunned musicians and listeners, Jurowski absolutely established that the magic of his debut was no fluke.

Just a year before becoming music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Riccardo Muti rattled its listeners by asking: "What is the 'Philadelphia Sound?' It's a publicity thing, isn't it?" The question drew blood. It was as if he had proposed that William Penn be lifted off City Hall and put in storage. That question started a lively debate that continues still. Baffled by the uproar, Muti went on to say that an orchestra should have a sound for Mozart, for Brahms, for Scriabin and for other composers rather than forcing all music into one sound mold.

No matter how architecturally impressive a building may be, it's only walls and ceiling until animated by people who command - if not surpass - its potential. Though the sounds of many great artists massaged the Academy of Music's plaster in its first 50 years, the Old World structure waited until 1912 to take its place among the centers of New World culture with the arrival of its first resident titan, conductor Leopold Stokowski. The first great music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, whose stormy reign lasted until 1941, Stokowski wasn't just the most glamorous of Philadelphia musicians, he was possibly the most artistically distinguished.

Teddy Pendergrass' eyes are closed behind gold-framed glasses. His face is serene, like that of someone meditating, as he tunes in to the music that fills the recording studio. He savors it, rocking gently, bobbing his head, shifting his shoulders from side to side. He is lost in it, oblivious to all save that which has sustained him through triumphs and trials. "It's my life," says Pendergrass, one of nine new members to be inducted today into the Philadelphia Music Foundation Hall of Fame.

Nolan Miller, 73, of Haddonfield, whose ultrarefined sound led the legendarily blended French horn section of the Philadelphia Orchestra for several decades, died Sunday, April 7, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He had been battling leukemia and died of a stroke, said his wife, Marjorie. Mr. Miller joined the orchestra as coprincipal horn upon graduation from the Curtis Institute of Music in 1965 and assumed the principal horn spot in the 1978-79 season. He retired from the orchestra after four decades, in 2005.

Nolan Miller, 73, of Haddonfield, whose ultrarefined sound led the legendarily blended French horn section of the Philadelphia Orchestra for several decades, died Sunday, April 7, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He had been battling leukemia and died of a stroke, said his wife, Marjorie. Mr. Miller joined the orchestra as coprincipal horn upon graduation from the Curtis Institute of Music in 1965 and assumed the principal horn spot in the 1978-79 season. He retired from the orchestra after four decades, in 2005.

Like several previous Philadelphia Orchestra conductors, Charles Dutoit appears to be leaving a bit wounded. After visiting for more than 30 years — as guest conductor, director of the orchestra's two summer seasons, and finally as chief conductor of the regular subscription concerts — Dutoit, who is 75, this week concludes a four-year appointment that encompassed the most troubled period of the institution's history. He'll no doubt return as a guest, though not for awhile, as he maintains a respectful distance while Yannick Nézet-Séguin launches his own music-director tenure in the fall.

There's no getting around the fact that what makes the Philadelphia Orchestra the Philadelphia Orchestra is a certain skillful manipulation of sound. And why would you want to get around it? This trademark sonority, much remarked on over the years, is a dear asset. With change in the air at the orchestra and so much at stake, this seems a good moment for an identity verification. "There is no such thing as the Philadelphia sound. The sound is the sound of the conductor," Eugene Ormandy reportedly once said.

SALLY A. HURTT had a soft spot for children. As a foster mother, she took in more than 30 children, many of them special-needs youngsters who required the special kind of love and devotion that Sally could give them. And she was something of a second mother to the four teenage Sledge sisters and toured the world with them as wardrobe mistress when they became the popular R&B and soul singing group called Sister Sledge. Sally Hurtt, a nurse and one-time operator of a catering business to which she imparted the remarkable culinary skills she brought from her native Georgia, died March 31. She was 80 and lived in Southwest Philadelphia.

I, too, am excited about the prospect of Yannick Nézet-Séguin's taking over the podium of the Philadelphia Orchestra, but I am distressed that the conductor who put our orchestra on the map - Leopold Stokowski - is so rarely mentioned. When "Stoki" took over the podium in 1912 (at age 30), Philadelphia's orchestra was a stuffy, little-respected organization. He reorganized and energized it and built it into what Rachmaninoff in 1929 called "the finest orchestra the world has ever heard.

Naming wunderkind conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin as the Philadelphia Orchestra's eighth music director promises to bring sizzle to the home of the "Philadelphia sound" not seen in decades. The arrival of the 35-year-old Canadian - who during his first visit to the city Friday delighted orchestra patrons, tourists, and baseball fans alike - recalls that of another young maestro, Riccardo Muti. The fact that a then-under-40 Muti took over the conductor's podium a full 30 years ago is a good indication of just how welcome Nézet-Séguin's youthful energy will be - especially when coupled with his veteran conductor's resume.

In a bold return to eras of youthful leadership, the Philadelphia Orchestra has chosen to be led by an emerging - though much sought-after - conductor. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, a 35-year-old Canadian whose starry orchestra and opera career is much in the ascent, is set to become Philadelphia's eighth music director in 2012. At that time, chief conductor Charles Dutoit will take the title of conductor laureate. The orchestra's board was expected to approve the appointment Monday.

The Philadelphia Orchestra's spring tour of Asia is making itself felt in the coming Kimmel Center concert weeks, as chief conductor Charles Dutoit blows dust off repertoire that's going on the road, with Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and Debussy's La Mer making welcome returns on Friday. Performances were a significant step away from a caliber appropriate to Tokyo's Suntory Hall (or, for that matter, Carnegie Hall, where the program is repeated on Tuesday), though Dutoit's authority with this music was apparent in any number of respects.

Thomas S. Steele, 69, formerly of Cherry Hill, a mastering engineer who helped create "Philadelphia Sound" recordings, died of complications from heart surgery March 6 at Naples Community Hospital in Naples, Fla. Mr. Steele was cofounder of Frankford/Wayne Mastering. Before the advent of CDs, mastering labs transferred magnetic tapes from recording studios onto acetate discs. "It was the final step between the recording studio and the pressing plant," said Joe Tarsia, a retired recording engineer who owned Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia.

In some cities - Los Angeles and Chicago come to mind - a music director gets hired after leading a program or two. In more risk-averse Philadelphia, things can take a little longer. Charles Dutoit has conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra more times than anyone else in its history save Eugene Ormandy, president James Undercofler told Thursday night's Verizon Hall audience. In fact, that's not true, an orchestra spokeswoman said yesterday, but Dutoit has visited the orchestra hundreds of times, which earned him the right, finally, for the first time, to take the podium Thursday as the orchestra's new - well, we'll get to that title in a moment.