Kansas City Symphony
2012-2013 Classical Series
October 5, 6 and 7, 2012
Michael Stern, Conductor
Jorge Federico Osorio, Piano
BARBER
GRIEG
Symphony No. 1 (in one movement), Op. 9
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16
Allegro molto moderato
Adagio —
Allegro moderato molto e marcato —
Poco più tranquillo — Tempo I
— INTERMISSION —
BRAHMS
Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98
Allegro non troppo
Andante moderato
Allegro giocoso
Allegro energico e passionato
Nov. 2, 2002, page 1
Jorge Federico Osorio
One of the pre-eminent pianists of our time, Jorge Federico
Osorio is internationally acclaimed for his superb musicianship
and masterful command of the instrument. He has performed
with many of the world's leading orchestras, including the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra,
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra,
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony,
Concertgebouw Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Moscow State
Orchestra, Orchestre Nationale de France, Philharmonia
Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Warsaw
Philharmonic. Mr. Osorio's concert tours have taken him to
Europe, Asia, and North, Central and South America, where 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, Michel
Plasson and Carlos Miguel Prieto, among many others. American festival appearances have
included the Hollywood Bowl, Ravinia, Newport and Grant Park Festivals.
In July of 2010, Mr. Osorio performed all five Beethoven Concerti with the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival in back-to-back concerts.
Chicagoclassicalreview.com praised his performances as "revelatory on virtually every level."
Two months earlier, Mr. Osorio played Liszt's Concerto No. 2 with the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra at Symphony Center to great critical acclaim. "With his sterling technique Osorio
can roar through this beloved Romantic concerto with the best of them..." (Chicago
Tribune).
In addition to performances in Berlin, Brussels, Dusseldorf and Stuttgart during the past few
years, Mr. Osorio performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Gewandhaus in
Leipzig. He also gave recitals in Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area and Chicago, where he
performed on the prestigious Bank of America Great Performers Series at Symphony Center.
Recent seasons have included concerts throughout Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and
Spain, and performances with the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee,
Puerto Rico, New Mexico, Louisiana, Memphis, Huntsville, Akron, Elgin and Florida (West
Coast). Of Mr. Osorio's 2007 New York Lincoln Center recital The New York Times
proclaimed, "the sweep and freshness of his readings made his performance impossible to
resist."
A prolific recording artist, Mr. Osorio has recorded a wide variety of repertoire, including a
Brahms solo CD that Gramophone hailed as "one of the most distinguished discs of Brahms'
piano music in recent years." Other recordings by Mr. Osorio include Beethoven's Five Piano
Concerti and Choral Fantasy, Brahms Concerto No. 2, and concerti by Chávez, Mozart,
Ponce, Rachmaninov, Rodrigo, Schumann and Tchaikovsky. Piano Español, a collection of
works by Albéniz, Falla, Granados and Soler, received glowing reviews internationally and has
Nov. 2, 2002, page 2
marked Mr. Osorio as one of the great interpreters of Spanish piano music in the world. Mr.
Osorio's most recent recording is the Debussy Preludes (Books I and II) along with selected
works by Liszt.
Recipient of several international prizes and awards, including the Dallas Symphony
Orchestra's Gina Bachauer Award and the Rhode Island International Master Piano
Competition, Mr. Osorio is passionately involved in the performance of chamber music. In
addition to having served as artistic director of the Brahms Chamber Music Festival in
Mexico, he has performed in a piano trio with violinist Mayumi Fujikawa and cellist Richard
Markson, and has collaborated with violinists Ani Kavafian, Elmar Oliveira and Henryk
Szeryng. He is also a dedicated teacher and is on the faculty at Roosevelt University's
Chicago College of Performing Arts. Mr. Osorio began his musical studies at the age of five
with his mother, Luz María Puente, and later attended the conservatories of Mexico, Paris
and Moscow, where he studied with Bernard Flavigny, Monique Haas and Jacob Milstein.
Additionally, he worked with Nadia Reisenberg and Wilhelm Kempff. Highly revered in his
native Mexico, Mr. Osorio currently resides in the United States.
Artek, Cedille, Naxos, ASV, CBS, EMI & IMP Recordings Steinway Artist
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Symphony No. 1 (in one movement), Op. 9 (1936)
Piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three
trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings.
SIDEBAR – BULLET POINTS:
• Barber wrote his Symphony No. 1 while in Italy as a recipient of the Prix de Rome
• The Symphony was the first American work performed at the prestigious Salzburg Festival
• Barber said that the work’s single movement was “a synthetic treatment of the four-movement
classical symphony”
Samuel Barber, who first revealed his considerable talents to the world with his sparkling Overture to “The School for
Scandal” in 1932, had his standing as one of America’s brightest young composers reaffirmed when, three years later, he
received both the Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship and the American Prix de Rome. (He was awarded a second Pulitzer in
1936, the first composer to be so honored.) The purpose of these awards was to allow their recipients to work and study
abroad (the Prix de Rome prize included free room and board in that city), and in August 1935, Barber sailed for Europe.
That winter in Rome was a productive one for Barber: he wrote several songs and finished his First Symphony. Through
two American friends, the pianists Alexander Kelberine and his wife, Jeanne Behrend, he met Bernardino Molinari, the
conductor of Rome’s Augusteo Orchestra, and played him the new Symphony at the piano. Molinari was much taken with
the piece, and he promised to perform it during the following season. The concert on December 13th was a success. Barber
set out immediately for home, where Artur Rodzinski presented the work’s first American performance with the Cleveland
Orchestra on January 22, 1937. On July 25th, Rodzinski again conducted the score, at the Salzburg Festival, making it the
first American piece heard at that prestigious event.
The composer wrote of the First Symphony: “The form of my Symphony in One Movement is a synthetic treatment of
the four-movement classical symphony. It is based on three themes of the initial Allegro non troppo, which retain
Nov. 2, 2002, page 3
throughout the work their fundamental character. The Allegro opens with the usual exposition of a main theme, a more
lyrical second theme, and a closing theme. After a brief development of the three themes, instead of the customary
recapitulation, the first theme, in diminution, forms the basis of the scherzo section (Vivace). The second theme (oboe
over muted strings) then appears in augmentation, in an extended Andante tranquillo. An intense crescendo introduces the
finale, which is a short passacaglia based on the first theme (introduced by the violoncelli and contrabassi), over which,
together with figures from other themes, the closing theme is woven, thus serving as a recapitulation for the entire
symphony.”
More than just the integration of the Symphony’s movements and the cyclical nature of its themes mark this work as a
descendent of 19th-century Romanticism — there is, in addition, its inherent lyricism, harmonic richness and emotional
expression. David Ewen wrote, “Barber belonged to the American conservative composers ... in that he paid considerable
attention to architectonic construction, was not afraid to yield to fluent melodic writing, preferred simplicity to complexity,
and was ever in search of a deeply poetic idea.”
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 (1868)
Pairs of woodwinds, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings>
SIDEBAR – BULLET POINTS:
• Grieg largely composed his Piano Concerto during an extended vacation at Sölleröd, north of
Copenhagen, in the summer of 1868
• The Concerto closed the youthful period of Grieg’s life devoted to large-scale compositions
• The work’s perfect matching of content, form and instrumentation caused the distinguished pianist
and conductor Hans von Bülow to call Grieg “the Chopin of the North”
Grieg completed his studies at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1863. Rather than heading directly home to Norway,
however, he settled in Copenhagen to study privately with Niels Gade, at that time Denmark’s most prominent musician
and generally regarded as the founder of the Scandinavian school of composition. Back in Norway, Grieg’s creative work
was concentrated on the large forms advocated by his Leipzig teachers and by Gade. By 1867, he had produced the Piano
Sonata, the first two Violin and Piano Sonatas, a Symphony (long unpublished and made available only as recently as 1981)
and the concert overture In Autumn. He also carried on his work to promote native music, and gave an unprecedented
concert exclusively of Norwegian compositions in 1866. Grieg arranged to have the summer of 1868 free of duties, and he
returned to Denmark for an extended vacation at a secluded retreat at Sölleröd, north of Copenhagen, where he began his
Piano Concerto. He thoroughly enjoyed that summer, sleeping late, taking long walks, eating well, and tipping a glass in
the evenings with friends at the local inn. The sylvan setting spurred his creative energies, and the new Concerto was
largely completed by the time he returned to Norway in the fall.
The Concerto’s first movement opens with a bold summons by the soloist. The main theme is given by the woodwinds
and taken over almost immediately by the piano. A flashing transition, filled with skipping rhythms, leads to the second
theme, a tender cello melody wrapped in the warm harmonies of the trombones. An episodic development section,
launched by the full orchestra playing the movement’s opening motive, is largely based on the main theme in dialogue.
The recapitulation returns the earlier themes, after which the piano displays a tightly woven cadenza. The stern
introductory measures are recalled to close the movement. The Adagio begins with a song filled with sentiment and
nostalgia played by the strings and rounded off by touching phrases in the solo horn. The soloist weaves elaborate musical
filigree above the simple accompaniment before the lovely song returns in an enriched setting. The themes of the finale’s
outer sections are constructed in the rhythms of a popular Norwegian dance, the halling. The movement’s central portion
presents a wonderful melodic inspiration, introduced by the solo flute, that derives from the dreamy atmosphere of the
preceding movement.
Nov. 2, 2002, page 4
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 (1884-1885)
Pairs of woodwinds plus piccolo and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, triangle and
strings.
SIDEBAR – BULLET POINTS:
• The Fourth Symphony’s emotional content may have been influenced by the combination of the
epic and the melancholy in the tragedies of Sophocles
• The 19th-century German musicologist Phillip Spitta believed that the Andante was the greatest
symphonic slow movement written to that time
• The Symphony was performed at Brahms’ final public appearance, at the Vienna Philharmonic
concert of March 7, 1897
In the popular image of Brahms, he appears as a patriarch: full grey beard, rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes. He grew the
beard in his late forties as, some say, a compensation for his late physical maturity — he was in his twenties before his voice
changed and he needed to shave — and it seemed to be an external admission that Brahms had allowed himself to become
an old man. The ideas did not seem to flow so freely as he approached the age of fifty, and he even put his publisher on
notice to expect nothing more. Thankfully, the ideas did come, as they would for more than another decade, and he soon
completed the superb Third Symphony. The philosophical introspection continued, however, and was reflected in many of
his works. The Second Piano Concerto of 1881 is almost autumnal in its mellow ripeness; this Fourth Symphony is music of
deep thoughtfulness that leads “into realms where joy and sorrow are hushed, and humanity bows before that which is
eternal,” wrote the eminent German musical scholar August Kretzschmar.
One of Brahms’ immediate interests during the composition of the Fourth Symphony was Greek drama. He had been
greatly moved by the tragedies of Sophocles in the German translations of his friend Gustav Wendt (1827-1912), director
of education in Baden-Baden (Wendt dedicated the volume to Brahms upon its publication in 1884), and many
commentators have seen the combination of the epic and the melancholy in this Symphony as a reflection of the works of
that ancient playwright. Certainly the choice of E minor as the key of the work is an indication of its tragic nature. This is a
rare tonality in the symphonic world, and with so few precedents such a work as Haydn’s in that key (No. 44), a doleful
piece subtitled “Mourning Symphony,” was an important influence. That great melancholic among 19th-century
composers, Tchaikovsky, chose E minor as the key for his Fifth Symphony.
The Symphony’s first movement begins almost in mid-thought, as though the mood of sad melancholy pervading this
opening theme had existed forever and Brahms had simply borrowed a portion of it to present musically. The movement is
founded upon the tiny two-note motive (short–long) heard immediately at the beginning. To introduce the necessary
contrasts into this sonata form other themes are presented, including a broadly lyrical one for horns and cellos and a
fragmented fanfare. The movement grows with a wondrous, dark majesty to its closing pages. “A funeral procession
moving across moonlit heights” is how the young Richard Strauss described the second movement. Though the tonality is
nominally E major, the movement opens with a stark melody, pregnant with grief, in the ancient Phrygian mode. The mood
brightens, but the introspective sorrow of the beginning is never far away. The dance-like quality of the third movement
heightens the pathos of the surrounding movements, especially the granitic splendor of the finale. The closing movement
is a passacaglia — a series of variations on a short, recurring melody. There are some thirty continuous variations here,
though it is less important to follow them individually than to feel the massive strength given to the movement by this
technique. The opening chorale-like statement, in which trombones are heard for the first time in the Symphony, recurs
twice as a further supporting pillar in the unification of the movement.
©2012 Dr. Richard E. Rodda