I do not wish to sound ungrateful for an unusual offering but the appeal of such music is surely severely limited. My overall impression is of a gravely academic mind compelled by the taste and fashion of the time to produce music of an alien style and virtuosity. The Tarantella and Valse and the interestingly entitled Reverie Fantastique raise high hopes yet all three long outstay their welcome (the Reverie is over 14 minutes in length). The Tarantella is a dour, Alkanesque oddity, a poor alternative to traditional Neapolitan gaiety, and the Reverie, after a self-consciously 'different' start slides gratefully into convention.
The insert-note makes heady claims for the grandly named Arabesque sur un Theme de l'opera ''Rigoletto'', finding Liszt's familiar alternative 'flashy' by comparison. Yet as a composition this hardly compares with Liszt's elegant, scintillating and, above all, inventive recreation. Indeed, to evoke Liszt in relation to Bulow (even if he was temporarily his father-in-law) seems to me a mistake. More generally, Bulow is at his best when he is least ambitious and his 11 movement Tanzweisen from Gluck's Iphigenie in Aulis retains much of the composer's original grace and energy. The opening ''Waffentanz'' makes an attractive curtain-raiser and the ''Tambourin'' could be extracted for a useful encore. Hard working Daniel Blumenthal (even now his recordings of concertos by Devreese and a second disc of Fuch's piano sonatas await review) does his best, yet his strong and musicianly playing cannot rescue a lost cause. The recordings are adequate.'