Nearly all the Toscanini Collection has been well-planned, but I cannot understand why Horowitz's performance of Pictures at an Exhibition has been included, especially since it is already available as part of RCA's Horowitz Collection, where it is coupled with the 1941 studio version of the Tchaikovsky concerto (1/92). In fact, all the performances listed above are available in that edition so here is a case of needless duplication—there were other purely orchestral Toscanini recordings which could have been reissued instead.
I reviewed the Brahms in July last year, when it appeared in the company of solo pieces by Brahms, Schubert and Liszt. The transfer is the same, rather indifferent production, and there is string distortion in the second movement. After another hearing I must plead guilty to having undervalued the performance, however, which no longer strikes me as unsettled but very strong, aristocratic and expressive. I still find Horowitz's Pictures somewhat remote and unfeeling: there is some breathtaking playing, but he doesn't respond to the work's colour and drama. He plays his own arrangement, which makes only modest alterations to Mussorgsky's original.
Most commentators seem to prefer the live 1943 performance of the Tchaikovsky to the 1941 studio recording. The later version has the excitement of a special occasion, and some stunning playing from soloist and orchestra, but Horowitz and Toscanini part company for several bars in the slow movement. Overall, however, it is a performance to treasure as a feast of great playing. But so is the 1941 recording, where virtuosity is married to a certain elegance and sense of proportion which are not so noticeable in the live account. The studio account is more grounded, more considered, and slightly less exciting. In both performances the sound has a good deal of presence. If you should want the 1943 live performance but not Pictures, the Horowitz Collection couples it with Beethoven's Emperor Concerto (12/90).'