"1958 was a red-letter year for pianists. The first International Tchaikovsky Competition took place in Moscow and was won, unanimously and amid unprecedented publicity, by Van Cliburn of Texas. With characteristic bravado, jury member Sviatoslav Richter, ignoring rules and regulations, gave a hundred marks to Cliburn and zero to his rivals, baldly asserting, 'he's a pianist, the others are not'." - Gramophone, 2004

This week we present piano concertos by Prokofiev and Rachmaninov, recorded by Van Cliburn with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the early 1960s under Walter Hendl and Fritz Reiner, both sounding fresh and revitalised after Pristine's stereo XR remastering.

We also celebrate the 133rd birthday this week of Prokofiev, with a special discount on all of his music - as composer, pianist and conductor - from the Pristine catalogue.

This week we return to our series featuring Sir Adrian Boult’s prewar recordings with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, of which he was the first music director. This release focuses on music of the early Romantic period, and the kind of colorful, exciting overtures that used to be a staple as symphonic concert openers and in outdoor bandshell performances, but which has almost completely disappeared from the repertoire over the past several decades. 

With music from Auber, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Nicolai, Schumann, Suppé and Weber come a number of recordings by composers for which these were his only ever recordings - and, among this release, around half of all these recordings have never been reissued before!

We also celebrate the 142nd birthday this week of Leopold Stokowski, with a special automatic discount on all of our recordings of his conducting.

This week sees the conclusion of the fabulous 1956 Bayreuth Ring Cycle, starring Astrid Varnay, Hans Hotter, Wolfgang Windgassen, Josef Greindl, Gustav Neidlinger, Paul Kuen (and many more) - all brought together under the inspired baton of Hans Knappertsbusch to produce one of the greatest Rings of all time.

Götterdämmerung now joins the previous three operas, and we are offering the complete Ring at a discount when you buy the whole thing, whether as a high quality download or as a set of 13 CDs.

We're also celebrating the 135th birthday this week of the great English conductor Sir Adrian Boult, with a special discount on all his Pristine albums, of which there are many to choose from!