Final Thoughts: The Last Piano Works of Schubert & Brahms Jorge Federico Osorio

• Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Piano Sonata No. 20 in A Major, D. 959:
• 1 Piano Sonata No. 20 in A Major, D. 959: I. Allegro 14:51
• 2 Piano Sonata No. 20 in A Major, D. 959: II. Andantino 08:04
• 3 Piano Sonata No. 20 in A Major, D. 959: III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace 04:53
• 4 Piano Sonata No. 20 in A Major, D. 959: IV. Rondo: Allegretto 11:20
• Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): 7 Fantasies, Op. 116:
• 5 7 Fantasies, Op. 116: No. 1. Capriccio in D Minor 02:19
• 6 7 Fantasies, Op. 116: No. 2. Intermezzo in A Minor 03:18
• 7 7 Fantasies, Op. 116: No. 3. Capriccio in G Minor 02:59
• 8 7 Fantasies, Op. 116: No. 4. Intermezzo in E Major 04:31
• 9 7 Fantasies, Op. 116: No. 5. Intermezzo in E Minor 03:16
• 10 7 Fantasies, Op. 116: No. 6. Intermezzo in E Major 02:58
• 11 7 Fantasies, Op. 116: No. 7. Capriccio in D Minor 02:16
• 3 Intermezzi, Op. 117:
• 12 3 Intermezzi, Op. 117: No. 1 in E-Flat Major 04:53
• 13 3 Intermezzi, Op. 117: No. 2 in B-Flat Minor 04:34
• 14 3 Intermezzi, Op. 117: No. 3 in C-Sharp Minor 05:55
• 6 Klavierstücke, Op. 118:
• 15 6 Klavierstücke, Op. 118: No. 1. Intermezzo in A Minor 01:54
• 16 6 Klavierstücke, Op. 118: No. 2. Intermezzo in A Major 05:49
• 17 6 Klavierstücke, Op. 118: No. 3. Ballade in G Minor 03:21
• 18 6 Klavierstücke, Op. 118: No. 4. Intermezzo in F Minor 02:27
• 19 6 Klavierstücke, Op. 118: No. 5. Romanze in F Major 04:06
• 20 6 Klavierstücke, Op. 118: No. 6. Intermezzo in E-Flat Minor 05:02
• 4 Klavierstücke, Op. 119:
• 21 4 Klavierstücke, Op. 119: No. 1. Intermezzo in B Minor 03:50
• 22 4 Klavierstücke, Op. 119: No. 2. Intermezzo in E Minor 04:39
• 23 4 Klavierstücke, Op. 119: No. 3. Intermezzo in C Major 01:48
• 24 4 Klavierstücke, Op. 119: No. 4. Rhapsody in E-Flat Major 04:31
• Franz Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-Flat Major, D. 960:
• 25 Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-Flat Major, D. 960: I. Molto moderato 19:03
• 26 Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-Flat Major, D. 960: II. Andante sostenuto 10:10
• 27 Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-Flat Major, D. 960: III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace con delicatezza 03:58
• 28 Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-Flat Major, D. 960: IV. Allegro ma non troppo 07:50
• Total Runtime 02:34:35

Info for Final Thoughts: The Last Piano Works of Schubert & Brahms

Jorge Federico Osorio, “an imaginative interpreter with a powerful technique (The New York Times), deftly pairs Brahms’s final solo piano works with those by Schubert for an inventive program of richly satisfying works that capture the essence of each composer’s towering individuality.

Osorio records Brahms’s Three Intermezzos, Op. 117, and Six Piano Pieces, Op. 118, for the first time. He revisits Brahms’s Seven Fantasies, Op. 116, and Four Piano Pieces, Op. 119, which he last recorded nearly two decades ago, to great acclaim: “Quite marvelous,” said BBC Music Magazine. “It’s clear that Jorge Federico Osorio is an important Brahmsian,” proclaimed the Chicago Tribune. On his new album, Osorio’s penchant for color accentuates the individual character of these concentrated miniatures.

On this, his first Schubert recording, Osorio, whom the Los Angeles Times called “one of the more elegant and accomplished pianists on the planet,” presents the composer’s final two Piano Sonatas, D. 959 and D. 960, epic in scale and brimming with melodic invention. Osorio’s insights into the music’s architecture yield eloquent performances of these spacious, ambitious masterworks. Osorio’s Cedille Records albums of Mexican and Spanish music have introduced the pianist to new audiences worldwide. Now they can hear his artistry in more of the core German repertoire that has been central to his concert life for decades.

Osorio has performed Brahms’s Piano Quintet with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The Mexican-born, European-trained virtuoso has served as artistic director of Mexico’s Brahms Chamber Music Festival. He has received the Medalla Bellas Artes, the highest honor granted by Mexico’s National Institute of Fine Arts, and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Gina Bachauer Award.

Jorge Federico Osorio, piano

Jorge Federico Osorio
has been internationally acclaimed for his superb musicianship, powerful technique, vibrant imagination, and deep passion, and hailed as “one of the more elegant and accomplished pianists on the planet” (Los Angeles Times). He has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Symphony Orchestras of Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México; the Israel, Warsaw, and Royal Philharmonics; the Moscow State Orchestra, Orchestre Nationale de France, Philharmonia Orchestra, and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra. Osorio’s concert tours have taken him to Europe; Asia; and North, Central, and South America. He has collaborated with such distinguished conductors as Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons, Lorin Maazel, Klaus Tennstedt, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, James Conlon, Luis Herrera, Manfred Honeck, Eduardo Mata, Juanjo Mena, Michel Plasson, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Maximiano Valdés, and Jaap van Zweden, among many others. American festival appearances have included the Hollywood Bowl, Ravinia, Newport, and Grant Park Festivals. One of the highlights of Osorio’s long and distinguished career was the performance of all five Beethoven Concertos over two consecutive nights with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the 2010 Ravinia Festival. During the past several years, Osorio has performed in Berlin, Brussels, Düsseldorf and Stuttgart; at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; and at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. Recent American recitals have taken him to Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Chicago, where he performed on the prestigious Bank of America Great Performers Series at Symphony Center. Osorio has also given two highly acclaimed New York City recitals at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.

A prolific recording artist, Osorio has documented a wide variety of repertoire, including a solo Brahms CD that Gramophone proclaimed “one of the most distinguished discs of Brahms’ piano music in recent years.” Recordings with orchestra include Beethoven’s five Piano Concertos and Choral Fantasy; both Brahms concertos; and concertos by Chávez, Mozart, Ponce, Rachmaninov, Rodrigo, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky. Osorio’s acclaimed solo recordings on Cedille Records include Salón Mexicano, comprising music of Mexican composers Manuel M. Ponce, Filipe Villanueva, Ricardo Castro, and José Rolón; an entire disc devoted to music of Ponce; a 2-CD set of Debussy and Liszt; and Piano Español, a collection of works by Albéniz, Falla, Granados, and Soler that received glowing reviews internationally and marked Osorio as one of the world’s great interpreters of Spanish piano music. Osorio’s recorded work may be found on the Artek, ASV, CBS, Cedille, EMI, IMP, and Naxos labels.

Osorio has won several international prizes and received numerous awards, including the prestigious Medalla Bellas Artes, the highest honor granted by Mexico’s National Institute of Fine Arts; the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Gina Bachauer Award; and First Prize in the Rhode Island International Master Piano Competition. An avid chamber music performer, he has served as artistic director of the Brahms Chamber Music Festival in Mexico; performed in a piano trio with violinist Mayumi Fujikawa and cellist Richard Markson; and collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Ani Kavafian, Elmar Oliveira, and Henryk Szeryng. A dedicated teacher, Osorio serves on the faculty at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts. For his own musical education, Osorio began his studies at the age of five with his mother, Luz María Puente, and later attended the conservatories of Mexico, Paris, and Moscow, where he worked with Bernard Flavigny, Monique Haas, and Jacob Milstein. Osorio’s other mentors include Nadia Reisenberg and Wilhelm Kempff. Highly revered in his native Mexico, where he performs often, Osorio resides in Highland Park, Illinois, and is a Steinway Artist.

Mexico National Symphony Orchestra
Founded in 1928 by composer Carlos Chávez, the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México is the most important musical ensemble in Mexico. The orchestra has won numerous awards, including a 2002 Latin Grammy nomination for Best Classical Album. Its principal conductors have included José Pablo Moncayo, Luis Herrera de la Fuente, Sergio Cárdenas, Francisco Savín, Arturo Diemecke and, since 2007, Carlos Miguel Prieto. Legendary musicians who have conducted the orchestra include Heitor Villa-Lobos, Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Krzysztof Penderecki, Otto Klemperer, Pierre Monteux, Sergiu Celibidache, Leonard Bernstein, and Sir Georg Solti. On its most recent tour, under music director Carlos Miguel Prieto, the orchestra played to great acclaim in the most prestigious halls of Europe, including the Tonhalle in Düsseldorf, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, and Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, among others.

Carlos Miguel Prieto
An exciting and insightful communicator renowned for his charismatic presence on the conductor’s podium and his versatile command of various composers and styles, Carlos Miguel Prieto is considered one of the most dynamic young conductors on the classical stage today. Music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería in his native Mexico, and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra in the United States, Maestro Prieto was named music director of the YOA Orchestra of the Americas in November 2011. In high demand as a guest conductor, Maestro Prieto’s numerous North American guest conducting credits include the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Seattle, Dallas, Toronto, Houston, Indianapolis, Colorado, Vancouver, and San Antonio; the philharmonic orchestras of Florida, New Mexico, Dayton, and Calgary; and every major orchestra in Mexico. He has conducted orchestras throughout Europe, Russia, Israel, and Latin America. Recent debuts abroad include the New Japan Philharmonic in Japan, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra in Germany, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, and the Netherlands Radio Orchestra in Utrecht.

Prieto has made a series of recordings of Latin American and Mexican music for the Urtext label. His Naxos recording of Korngold’s Violin Concerto with violinist Philippe Quint and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería received a Grammy nomination. A graduate of Princeton and Harvard Universities (where he was concertmaster of the orchestra), Prieto studied conducting with Jorge Mester, Enrique Diemecke, Charles Bruck, and Michael Jinbo.

This album contains no booklet.