Online personality and violinist extraordinaire Ray Chen has redefined what it is to be a classical musician, and every performance shows why he’s a musical hero around the world, inspiring a new generation of musicians and music lovers.

Felix Mendelssohn took more than five years to complete his beautiful Violin Concerto in E minor, and it was a hit from its very first performance. Even still, Taiwanese Australian violinist Ray Chen’s fresh and fiery performance is a showstopper that might leave you wondering how his instrument doesn’t burst into flames from the energy he creates.

From its opening trumpet solo and thrilling attack of French horns that follows, through its beautifully intense third part (which includes the Adagietto, one of Mahler’s “greatest hits”)—Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 stands as arguably the best music he wrote. Mahler began work on the symphony shortly after a grave illness left him thinking about death, but within a year, he met and married Alma Schindler, and the rest of the symphony reflects his renewed outlook on life.