SAN JOSE---A felicitous confluence of Anglo-Latino cultures marked  a watershed  piano recital here on Sept. 9.
The 55,000-sq.ft. cultural center known as the Mexican Heritage Plaza has been around since 1999, but its attractive 520-seat auditorium had never featured a piano recital before. In a collaboration with the Steinway Society of San Jose, the center presented a Mexican-American pianist, Jorge Federico Osorio, before a rapt audience which represented both constituencies in this altogether successful intercultural experiment.

The president of the MHP, Marcela Davison Aviles, indicated that more such events were in the planning stage.
Born in Mexico City and teaching in Chicago’s Roosevelt University, the veteran Osorio carried off a evening of music from the Hispanic diaspora, most of it unfamiliar even to work-a-day music critics. These included Manual Ponce  (1882-1948), who wrote a wealth of keyboard music far beyond his Mexican megahit “Estrellita,” and the Spaniard Enrique Granados (1867-1916), who threw open the door for the later 20th-century guitar recitals with his many guitar-inspired piano pieces.

Admittedly, Ponce wrote a generous amount of short salon selections. But as Osorio brought out, Ponce also created substantial and demanding opuses like  the “Cuban Rhapsody,” a superb and elaborate piece heavy on filigree demanding technical prowess, with a fetching habañera in the middle. There were also vignettes, sentimental pieces like the “Mexican Ballad” with its fire-eating finale, and a formal 18the-century-style Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Handel.

In addition there was his Chopiniana side, with some whirlwind etudes and three mazurkas, which inspired Osorio to include the biggest piece of the evening, the grand 24-minute  Sonata No. 3 by Chopin (who, after all, spent considerable time on Spanish Majorca).

Granados, the talented figure tragically lost at sea when his ship was torpedoed during World War One, was represented by his familiar Spanish Dances Nos. 1, 2 and 5. An encore provided vicarious travel to "Granada," by Isaac Albeniz.

Osorio carried off this broad repertory with dispatch and no-fuss-no-muss efficiency, with every note neatly in place. He is something of a mystery figure in piano circles, having won some competition awards in the early 1970s, popping up briefly at the Cabrillo Music Festival in Aptos (CA) at least once, and not making his New York debut recital till 1997.

You’d like to have seen him throw more of his passion and personality into these pieces which came off too letter-perfect for their own good. Osorio clearly knows the repertory and studies it keenly. And his exposition was enlightening, not only to the crowd at the MHP, but also to the Latino school kids who heard him during a valuable two-day residency here in San Jose. 

Located in East San Jose in the midst of the Latin community, the MHP is an attractive multi-purpose facility (further adorned with ample parking that would be the envy of any concert hall). The auditorium itself is a gem, with acoustic isolation so good as nearly to shut out the ear-splitting boom-boom DJ dance music playing all evening long  at the adjacent pavilion.

Otherwise, you’d have to judge this signal event as somewhere between maravilloso and excelente.