Question: what constitutes the ingredients of a five-star review? Is it a flawless performance? Must it involve a musical masterpiece? Or do other factors come into play: a new discovery, a unique combination of artist and venue, for example. Perhaps there has to be an emotional or spiritual dimension. Either way, the confluence of Hans Otte’s Das Buch der Klänge (The Book of Sounds), eclectic-minded pianist Ivan Ilić, and a weathered Steinway on a tiny barge tethered on the Brooklyn side of the East River on a windy Friday night did it for me.

Bremen-born Hans Otte (1926-2007) was a German composer, pianist, radio promoter, and creator of  sound installations, poems, drawings and art videos. A fierce advocate of experimental American composers like John Cage, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young, Otte studied at Yale with Hindemith and went on to invite the likes of David Tudor to participate at Darmstadt. Das Buch der Klänge, written between 1979 and 1982 and recorded by the composer in 1984, is his best-known work, a series of 12 movements that employ devices typical of minimalism while pursuing an engrossing architectural arc and, in perhaps...