For this week's recommendation, I want to draw your attention to the French Romantic composer Ernest Chausson. Although not as well-known as Claude Debussy or Gabriel Fauré, what he managed to contribute over the course of a tragically abbreviated career – he died in a bicycle accident at 44 – suggests that Chausson had all the makings of a major artist finding his stride.

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For this week’s playlist recommendation I wanted to offer something that speaks to a recurring theme in my listening and relationship to music: the realization that separations between genres and forms are not solid as they might appear to be.

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Last week, I recommended the work of Annie Fischer, whom I called an “insider pianist” – an artist of mesmerizing talents and emotional depth who has not received her proper due in our collective knowledge.

This week, I’d like to highlight a similar artist: Dang Thai Son, a Vietnamese-Canadian pianist who began his studies in Hanoi with his mother, continued on to the Moscow State Conservatory, and in 1980, won the illustrious International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw.

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