Jorge Federico Osorio performing Piano Concertos by Manuel M Ponce, Ricardo Castro – Orquestra Sinfonica de Mineria/ Carlos Miguel Prieto – Cedille CDR 90000 221 (4/14/23) (complete track listing below, 74:31) [Distr. by Naxos] *****:
The works on this recording exemplify the romantic musical language in vogue in Mexico at the end of the 19th century, which later initiated the musical Nationalist movement brought on by the Mexican Revolution. The intention among Mexican composers was to cast off, as much as possible, the innately European aspects of musical expression, in order to recapture the spirit of the dance, insofar as the Mexican spirit could envision it.
With the success of his opera Atzimba (1900), composer Ricardo Castro (1864-1907) earned a monthly annuity permitting him to sojourn to Paris in 1903, where in the course of mastering his own piano technique and promoting “good Mexican music,” Castro made the acquaintance of luminaries Teresa Carreño, Eugène d’Albert, and Camille Saint-Saens, the last of whom helped sponsor various Paris recitals. The Piano Concerto (1885-1887), with its undeniable debts to the virtuosity of Liszt and the cyclic form of Franck. But the scale of expression, lavish and richly harmonized, belongs to Castro, even if its florid filigree admits influences from Chopin and Scharwenka. The Concerto bears a dedication to Carl Reinecke.
The opening movement, Allegro moderato, besides proffering a dark lyricism, explodes intermittently with gestures that embrace the full spectra of the keyboard. Osorio has cadenza periods in which to exploit his own capacity for rounded sonorities, forceful octaves, and brilliant runs. The music ends softly, serving as a segue directly into the lulling Andante. Lyrical and expressive in a parlando and arioso style reminiscent of Anton Rubinstein, the melody assumes a richness worth the price of admission. The latter half of the movement, similar to the Chopin F Minor, becomes convulsively emotional and dramatic, before resuming its arioso expressiveness.
Critics immediately responded to the last movement, claiming Casto had created “a delirious Polonaise” finale. This Polonaise (Allegro) projects an exuberance light and volatile at once, perhaps akin to bravura moments in Saint-Saens and Gottschalk. The woodwind section of the Mineria ensemble has its hands full, while Osorio frolics in large choral blocks and fleet runs. The extended coda, set over a potent pedal point, bursts with colors from the brass and deep basses, then Osorio and the tutti arrive at a colossal peroration.
Osorio supplements the Concerto with three, brief piano pieces of Castro: first the 1906 Berceuse, a sweet, ternary lullaby that could pass as one by Grieg or Chabrier. Next, the 1896 Canto de amor, dedicated to Felipe Pedrell, the inspiration for Spain’s Manuel de Falla. The six-minute piece grows in sonority and emotional amplitude in Osorio’s colossal realization, imitating one of the Liszt songs of love. The harmonies no less border on a cross between Chopin, Brahms, and Debussy. Plainte, from 1907, aims at more modest effects, a lyrical miniature a la Mendelssohn, moving in small, canonic motifs, then flowering into an ardent song without words.
The versatile talent Manuel Maria Ponce (1882-1948) served music as a composer, pianist, conductor and pedagogue; and, as a collector of folklore materials, he contributed directly to the Nationalist movement in Mexico. Ponce sojourned to Europe several times, and the one-movement Piano Concerto No. 1 (1912) reflects his interest in German models, dictated by classes with Martin Krause, Liszt pupil and teacher of the Chliean virtuoso, Claudio Arrau. Ponce gave the premiere with the “Beethoven” Orchestra led by Julian Carrillo on 7 July 1912.
The first movement, Allegro appassionato, in solemn declamation at first, immediately has Osorio execute an elongated trill and massive octaves before the woodwinds surround his filigree with lyrical curlicues. Like Schumann, Ponce employs the formula of repeated, symmetrical phrases, often perfumed with cascades in runs and arpeggios. The long-breathed fioritura resembles the Chopin rhetoric but without any national impulses.
The half cadence takes us to the Concerto’s heart, the extensive middle movement, Andantino amoroso, a patently Mexican love song, with color elements from the English horn to assist the meditative piano part. Soaring but brief moments of cadenza writing alternate with the soft orchestral tissue. The arioso, declamatory character of the movement might reflect the emotional tenor of the popular Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 2 in C Minor. Another huge pedal point brings the music to a temporary halt, only so Osorio may elaborate a passionate, solo cadenza that resembles an etude in the form of a nocturne. Osorio proceeds to trills that usher in block chords and contrasting filigree as we segue into the Finale: Allegro, which sports a rhapsodic blend of melody and repeated keyboard improvisation. The woodwinds join in, using the Schumann method of symmetrical repetition, and Osorio then indulges us in rhetoric, sultry and bravura, as the music uses a kind of disguised “fate” motif to move to a luxurious coda that crosses Mexican vitality with Rachmaninoff’s romantic harmony.
Osorio once more supplements the concerted music of his chosen composer, here Ponce, with four miniatures. The first, Arrulladora Mexicana (1909), gives us three minutes of nocturnal, meditative bliss. The 1901 Gavota casts a pre-Revolutionary aura of a dance we might associate with the more idyllic, romantic, and wistful scenes in the movie of old Mexico, Ramona, with Don Ameche and Loretta Young. The 1914 Romanza de amor Ponce composed for his wife, Clema. Osorio realizes this haunting, chromatically adventurous, nocturne with lyrical tenderness. Last, we have Intermezzo No. 1, from somewhere in the period 1925-1932, a piece that seems to reveal Parisian influence, a touch of romantic Satie or askew Chopin, conceived in the classical sonata-form. The cadenza leads to an abbreviated, subdued coda.
—Gary Lemco
Jorge Federico Osorio – Conciertos Románticos
CASTRO:
Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 22;
Berceuse, Op. 36/1;
Cano de amor;
Plainte, Op. 38/2;
PONCE:
Piano Concerto No. 1 “Romantico”;
Arrulladora Mexicana;
Gavota;
Romanza de amor;
Intermezzo No. 1
with Orquestra Sinfónica de Minería, Carlos Miguel Prieto conducting
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