Dang Thai Son

Vietnamese pianist Dang Thai Son won the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1980, becoming the first Asian-born performer to take first prize at that event. Son has since then made his career mostly in the West, specializing in Chopin's music. Dang Thai Son (in Vietnamese Đặng Thái Sơn) was born in Hanoi, then in North Vietnam, on July 2, 1958. He studied at first with his mother, Thai Thi Lien, who was a professor at Vietnam's National Academy of Music. A visiting pianist, Isaac Katz, heard him play in 1974 and convinced him to move to Moscow for further st...