When Duke Ellington urged new Yorkers to “take the A train,” he was suggesting they eschew their stodgy concert halls for an evening and head uptown, where the music

was equally great but the venues much more comfortable. Today, that same advice will lead Manhattan fans to another musical experience of equally high quality. Simply head in the other direction: You will end up aboard Olga Bloom’s barge at the Fulton Ferry Landing.

When Olga and her husband retired some 25 years ago, they had a vision of bringing chamber music to the city in a beautiful setting. Having sold their house to finance this venture, they began to create a glorious alternative for urban music lovers. But Olga’s husband soon died, and she found herself alone with a white elephant that had recently been towed to a spot near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. With no funds to speak of, she moved onto the barge and set up housekeeping (her fireplace is still visible in the concert hall).

Olga converted the old shell into the magnificent space that stands – and often gently rocks – today. The end result is an acoustic marvel, very warm sounding due to its wooden interior and boasting the most attractive concert backdrop in the entire city. Even the best lighting designers at the Metropolitan Opera cannot compete with the setting sun over the majestic skyline of Lower Manhattan and the subsequent brightening of the high-rise buildings in the crepuscular light.

This past weekend, the featured performer was pianist Sergey Schepkin. He has been getting quite a bit of ink over the past few years as a Bach specialist, and he began his recital not too far from his familiar territory, with the Suite No. 5 of Handel – the one with the set of variations based on “The Harmonious Blacksmith.” Taking full advantage of the resonance of the little hall, Mr. Schepkin reveled in a full sound, turning the otherwise somewhat muddy harpsichord overtones into clearly enunciated runs and trills. During his powerful and contemplative allemande, those comparisons to Glenn Gould, which seem to pop up in every article about him, no longer seemed so far-fetched.

Mr. Schepkin is from the strong handed Richter-Gilels-Berman school of Russian pianism, and his technique carried him far into that positively loony Schumann exploration of E.T.A. Hoffman known as “Kreisleriana.” The work is not only quixotic but also episodic and somewhat difficult to sustain as narrative. Such prodigious technique made some ragged transitions of mood more forgiveable. Part of the problem is Schumann himself: Peripeteia was unfortunately the norm during his daily psychoses. Bach specialist or not, Sergey Schepkin is a Russian pianist, and so “Pictures at an Exhibition” is his own personal Ural to climb. This was not a good performance of Mussorgsky – this was a great performance. He never made a single discernable mistake: With all of those arpeggiated passages, with all of those frenetic little crescendi, with all of those unhatched chicks running around, this man did not hit one wrong note.

His interpretive skills were even more impressive. Recognizing the work as first and foremost a piece of expressionistic poetry, Mr. Schepkin varied each picture slightly away from ordinary. The hollow sound he produced in the modal sections of “the old castle” was positively primeval. Tempi were brisk throughout, strongly accented passages positively frightening, little ritardandi and lightning flashes of surprise spine chilling.

My only suggestion is that Mr. Schepkin reconsider some of his dynamics: Several sections, legitimately loud and effectively reverberant in this little floating salon, left no room for him to accentuate the power of the “great gate” finale. Although nobility and grandeur were certainly there, this last picture was no more impressive than any other. Perhaps this is as it should be for an exhibition, but as music a little of the swelling, forceful majesty was lost.

A few seasons ago, as I was leaving another fine concert aboard the barge, I overheard a woman say to her friend that she did not understand why people felt the need to travel to Manhattan when they had such good music right here in Brooklyn. With artists like Sergey Schepkin on board, she may have had a point.