Few prominent conductors have such fleeting claims to greatness as has Eugene Ormandy -- but as the Japanese recording industry is proving, the moments are unquestionably there.

Throughout booms, recessions, and mergers in the music biz, there has been relatively little of Ormandy's music on CD. Sony's often-enjoyable Ormandy box, issued in 2008, emphasized lighter-weight stuff that doesn't address the open-ended questions that dogged Ormandy's reputation near the end of his more than four-decade music directorship of the Philadelphia Orchestra: Was his position in the symphonic world based on being feared by musicians, adored by boards of directors, and covering his artistic blind spots with the orchestra's plush sonority?

Only in Japan do Ormandy reissues abound -- not, unfortunately, from his pre-stereo discography when he was in his prime, but from the 1970s' RCA period now being imported by the Pennsylvania-based ArkivMusic, which has built a library of 40 Ormandy titles that include Mahler, Ives, Beethoven, Sibelius, Dvorak, and Prokofiev.

''The perception is that Ormandy . . . was hot and cold,'' says ArkivMusic general manager Jon Feidner. ``I think he's been dismissed more than is appropriate. The fact that he was around so long and produced so much could be part of the reason.''

What's truly new is the 21st century business model that makes Japanese imports possible. With desire for Ormandy's work difficult to determine, ArkivMusic.com produces on-demand, burning its discs as they are ordered.

ArkivMusic's top Ormandy seller is Sibelius' Symphonies 4 and 7 -- two lesser-known works the conductor did extremely well. Still, we're talking about sales of only around 400 copies.

Though the ArkivMusic recordings were made when Ormandy was sinking into infirmity, they have positive revelations. The maestro's inability to conduct complex meters (he had The Rite of Spring rewritten in 4/4 time) cannot be contradicted, but it accounts for the magisterial gait of most of his music.

Ormandy's reputation as a great concerto accompanist is enhanced in Bartok's Piano Concerto No. 2, in which -- with the recording's hairpin turns and unadulterated ferocity -- he's almost a partner in crime to pianist Alexis Weisenberg.

Like his predecessor Leopold Stokowski, Ormandy was no intellectual. Works for which the heavens should open seem merely posh, such as the Mahler Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection), coupled with downright dull excerpts from Wagner's Parsifal and Brahms' Alto Rhapsody with Shirley Verrett.

He is guilty of depending too much on the Philadelphia sound in a breezy but overly deluxe pair of Dvorak symphonies (Nos. 7 and 8). His Sibelius was different: Symphonies Nos. 4 and 7 show that he could use sound not just as an exterior luxury but also as a powerful vehicle of specific expression.

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