They say that the 3 Ts required of a successful concert pianist are
technique, tone, and taste. Something about Volodos intrigues me and
puzzles me at the same time. Watching him playing several of his
transcriptions has brought the problems into focus.

He solidly possess the first 2 Ts - tone and technique, but it's his
taste that fluctuates badly. His transcriptions illustrate this to
me. They are heavily Horowitz influenced with an occasional touch of
Rachmaninoff and Godowsky. The problem is they'll go along very
impressively and then lapse into a demonstration of purely bad taste -
for example, his transcriptions frequently thunder in the wrong places
musically, or contextually, simply for the sake of gratuitous
effect.

The Mozart-Volodos Turkish March is a good example of this. While
massive thundering writing at the close of the Mendelssohn-Liszt-
Horowitz Wedding March makes musical sense (it's heard so often on the
organ) - thundering the Turkish March is so irrationally oblivious to
the nature of the original piece - it's just very tacky musical
judgement. Same with the Rachmaninoff Italian Polka in Volodos'
transcription. It's a very snazzy, effective paraphrase until he
composes a completely awkward, out-of-context bridge that leads to a
bass octave rich thundering climax that is laughably out-of-context to
the original model.

Add to that rather bland interpretations of more substantive works,
i.e. Scriabin Sonata #10 and this sometimes brilliant pianist's gaping
weak spots surface.

Volodos is IMO a very mixed bag of strengths and weaknesses.