Program showcases Osorio and Long Beach Symphony

One of the more elegant and accomplished pianists on the planet, Jorge Federico Osorio has been playing with our local orchestras over the past two decades. He always brings new insights, eloquent readings and an effortless virtuosity to all his assignments.

Saturday night he came to the Long Beach Symphony and played not one, but two concertos. In the first, essaying the atmospheric solo in Manuel de Falla’s “Nights in the Gardens of Spain,” he created mellow sounds and magical arpeggios. He had the full collaboration of Long Beach music director Enrique Arturo Diemecke and an orchestra that had never played the piece.

In the second, Ravel’s daunting Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, Osorio’s natural subtlety commanded and outlined the passion in the work without making it the life-or-death affair it can be. One still admired greatly this well-considered performance by pianist and orchestra. And one still waits in vain to hear the Mexico City-born pianist in a solo recital. In a city full of boastful entrepreneurs, are there no budding impresa- rios?

For the second half of this colorful program, Diemecke put together two of Claude Debussy’s three orchestral Nocturnes, “Nuages” and “Fetes,” with the French composer’s “La Mer.” The combination showed off Debussy and the orchestra.

The wide contrasts and colorful instrumental writing in these pieces displayed this ensemble’s growing achievement.

The conductor, as he had earlier in the program, created transparent textures and a prismatic clarity, thus bringing to life Debussy’s descriptive writing.