I confess that before this I had not encountered Jorge Federico Osorio (born Mexico, 1951) but on this hearing I very much hope to get to know him better. A critic on the Los Angeles Times has described him as ‘one of the most elegant and accomplished pianists on the planet’. Elegant, yes, and whose playing has a warmth and humanity that I found immensely appealing.

From the first bars of Fauré’s Pavane, to quote the great Jorge Bolet, ‘you know you are in safe hands’. So far as the recorded sound is concerned, captured in the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, it’s realistic, honest, and with plenty of room to capture the tonal bloom of the instrument, a beautifully voiced Steinway.

And what a cleverly selected programme this is. The Fauré ends quietly on a single (tonic) low F sharp, which becomes the dominant of Debussy’s ‘Les collines d’Anacapri’. This is followed by a judiciously chosen further six Préludes from Books 1 and 2 with ‘La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune’ leading to ‘Clair de lune’ (from Suite bergamasque). These will leave you in no doubt that you are listening to a master colourist who does not present them in a washy Impressionist haze but as individually sculpted tone poems. You will, for instance, rarely hear the left-hand quavers at the end of ‘La cathédrale engloutie’ so clearly yet with Debussy’s flottant et sourd direction fully realised.

From two centuries earlier, three short pieces by Rameau are far from anachronistic, as one might expect, in this context. After which we are off to Spain for the remainder of the recital: Chabrier’s Habanera neatly eliding into the same languorous dance rhythm for both ‘La puerta del vino’ (Book 2) and ‘La soirée dans Grenade’ (from Estampes). ‘Alborada del gracioso’, though a fine performance, does not quite reach the heady heights of Lipatti’s benchmark. Osorio ends, as he began, with a pavane, this one a dance that, in the words of the composer, ‘a little princess might, in former times, have danced at the Spanish court’. It is played without sentiment and is thereby ineffably more touching.

The recording is released on the Chicago-based Cedille label, a not-for-profit organisation ‘devoted to promoting the finest musicians in the Chicago area’, funded by contributions from individuals, foundations and corporations.