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Lucas Debargue, 'Nostalgie du pays' (Miłosz Magin)

This #NowPlaying discovery comes to us from today's episode of the All Songs Considered podcast, which highlights the best music of August.

Miłosz Magin, who lived from 1929 until 1999, is not a household name in classical music, but pianist Lucas Debargue is trying hard to remedy that. Debargue, an adventurous pianist from France, has released something of a Magin primer, an album with a variety of the neglected composer's works that should be a revelation even to classical music geeks. Like Chopin before him, Magin was a Polish piano virtuoso who moved to Paris. His concertos, chamber music and solo piano pieces pay homage to the rhythms of his homeland – with a touch of Bartok's angularity – yet shine in a kind of French elegance. His "Nostalgie du pays" (Homesickness) is a simple, wistful daydream of a piece that will make you wonder where this undervalued composer has been all your life.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Tom Huizenga is a producer for NPR Music. He contributes a wide range of stories about classical music to NPR's news programs and is the classical music reviewer for All Things Considered. He appears regularly on NPR Music podcasts and founded NPR's classical music blog Deceptive Cadence in 2010.