This curious recital views Venice from a variety of perspectives; romantic or sinister, as a city of dreams or nightmares. Taking Chopin’s Barcarolle as its centrepiece, it fans out into an assortment including four world-premiere recordings. Granted, such a selection is necessarily personal rather than inclusive, yet Florian Uhlig, a young German pianist, could surely have included a further example from Faure’s 13 Barcarolles, an astonishing sequence ranging from Gounod-inspired lyricism to a bleaker darker utterance (Nos 7 and 9, for example) and a final transcendence and enigma. On a lighter note, Rachmaninov’s early Barcarolle and Moszkowski’s delightful tribute to Chopin, another example of the genre, would have made a more enticing choice than relatively undistinguished offerings by Gibsone, Abert and Marcello. The ‘Canzone’, too, from Liszt’s Venezia e Napoli, is a surprising inclusion when the preceding ‘Gondoliera’ is omitted. On the other hand it is good to have Liszt’s R(ichard) W(agner) – Venezia, inspired by Wagner’s funeral cortege as it moved down the Grand Canal and the second of the two funeral elegies, La lugubre gondole, where a desolating opening chime later erupts into rhetorical anger.
The performances are variable. Uhlig’s way with Chopin’s Barcarolle is warmly affectionate but it lacks the sort of rhythmic resilience that keeps everyhing on the move without sacrificing its myriad colours and felicities. He lacks the necessary degree of elegance in Faure’s early dreamscape and, overall, his playing is insufficiently stylish or characterful. The recordings are too cavernous for ideal clarity and Uhlig’s accompanying essay, where he attempts to tie things down to a Venetian view, when a work such as Chopin’s Barcarolle surely transcends such limitation, is far from lucid.'