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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Annie Fischer is what I call an “insider pianist,” an artist who is highly regarded and praised among classical musical insiders but almost unheard of and unheralded among the general public. She is a truly special artist, however, with a connection to this work that is as expressive of emotional depth, as it is of dazzling technical virtuosity.
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