MUSSORGSKY: “Pictures at an Exhibition”; other works...

MUSSORGSKY: “Pictures at an Exhibition”; other works for piano. Vladimir Horowitz, piano. RCA Victor Gold Seal 09026-60526-2. Recorded both in live concerts and studio sessions from 1928-79, this disc offers a fair sampling of the transgressions of taste that were a regular feature of Horowitz’s career. Among these: his own arrangement of “Pictures at an Exhibition,” an essay in bombast and bunkum that Liberace might have admired; his Look-Ma!-only-two-hands derangements of “Stars and Stripes Forever” and a theme from “Carmen”; his own, inane “Danse Excentrique,” and minor works by Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky all played to the hilt.