When I was on the radio in Connecticut in the early 1990s, my boss once rushed into the studio to ask the name of the ravishingly beautiful piece I was broadcasting. He had spent the last half hour driving in, captivated by this music. Even though he was quite conversant with the literature, he was at a loss to even guess the place or time of the music’s genesis. The work was the Symphony No. 1 of Alexander Scriabin.

Scriabin lived in his own world, both musically and socially. Born rich enough to dwell in the Russian countryside away from the quotidian pressures of urban recognition, he developed, like Ives, his own musical language based on pantheistic spiritualism. He dreamed of integrating the worlds of aural and visual communication, and even invented a keyboard that projected different colors for different chordal combination.

But Scriabin’s life was defined by one overwhelming tragedy: His precocious son drowned at age 11, when he had already begun to compose. Scriabin poured his grief into his music in the most coloristic ways imaginable.

I was reminded of this tragedy at the excellent recital of pianist Xiayin Wang on Monday at Alice Tully Hall.Ms.Wang traversed four of Scriabin’s piano pieces, each in a different mood and hue.

The Poeme in F-sharp major, Op. 32, is a dreamy sort of study, melodious but a little squishy in the wrong hands. Ms. Wang presented it without a great deal of schmaltz, and the effect was emotionally affecting. Its companion piece, in D major, is a clangorous and triumphant work that received an exuberant runthrough from Ms.Wang.

The pianist then delivered a charming rendition of the Waltz in A-flat major, which led to a favorite of Horowitz, himself a close associate of Scriabin. This final piece, titled “Vers la flame,” was unhurried and contemplative, poetic in meter, and slightly East Asian in character – just the right combination for this unique voice.

Ms. Wang is studying for her doctorate at the Manhattan School of Music, and she offered this solid recital as a practicum. Her Bach-Marcello reworking of the Concerto in D minor demonstrated that she is aware of the stylistic differences between “pure” Bach playing and hyphenated Bach playing. Gone were the strict metrics of the original, replaced by gorgeously uneven phrase lengths and slight portions of rubato.

Beethoven’s Sonata in E-flat major, Op. 31 No. 3, was also very well executed. Ms. Wang was especially conversant with that improvisatory quality so notable in this work, especially in the idiosyncratically syncopated 6/8 finale.

All was not peaches and cream, however. Ms.Wang had a difficult time with the Polonaise-Fantasy in A-flat major of Chopin. But she rallied in the second half with a robust, confident performance of Debussy’s “L’isle joyeuse.”

Ms. Wang had one further delightful surprise for the assembled throng. Her parents had just recently arrived from Beijing, in time to hear her perform at Lincoln Center. Her father, a professional erhu player,joined her on stage for an exhilarating folk song arrangement. Swelling with parental pride, he was obviously experiencing one of the most significant events of his life, one that the unfortunate Alexander Scriabin never had the opportunity to share.