Yehudi Menuhin is at the centre of this week’s new release in two of the twentieth century’s most important violin sonatas - Béla Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin and Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No. 1. Both works were still new when these recordings were made in 1947 and 1948, and in Bartók’s case Menuhin was not only the first recording artist but also the work’s dedicatee and first performer, preserving on disc a sonata written especially for him by the composer.

These Abbey Road recordings capture Menuhin at a pivotal moment in his career, bringing extraordinary authority to music then at the forefront of modern violin writing. Bartók’s fiercely individual solo sonata and Prokofiev’s dark, searching Violin Sonata No. 1, with Marcel Gazelle at the piano, are heard here in vivid new Pristine Ambient Stereo XR remasterings, revealing fresh depth and presence throughout.

To mark Guido Cantelli’s birth anniversary on 27 April, we’re offering 10% off all 25 of his Pristine releases this week. One of the most brilliant conductors of his generation, Cantelli died tragically young in 1956, but left behind performances of extraordinary precision, intensity and youthful fire.

This week we release the opening chapter of a major new addition to the Pristine catalogue: Franz Konwitschny’s 1959 Covent Garden Ring, beginning with Das Rheingold in vivid BBC broadcast sound from the Royal Opera House. With Hans Hotter’s commanding Wotan, Richard Holm’s mercurial Loge and Otakar Kraus’s darkly compelling Alberich, this first instalment immediately establishes the dramatic stature of the cycle.

What makes this Rheingold especially exciting is the sense of arrival it brings: a rare post-war Covent Garden Ring preserved in remarkably fine sound and now opened out in Ambient Stereo XR. It is the perfect threshold to the journey ahead, from the first glint of gold in the Rhine to the gods’ final ascent into Valhalla, with the remaining evenings to unfold across the months ahead.

To mark Leopold Stokowski’s 144th birthday, we’re offering 10% off all 56 Stokowski releases this week. From the sumptuous Philadelphia sound of Scheherazade to the modernist fire of his NBC broadcasts, it’s the perfect moment to revisit one of the great sonic visionaries in recorded music.

Herbert von Karajan’s 1962 Royal Festival Hall performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 in E major with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra is released this week in a new Ambient Stereo XR remastering from the original BBC broadcast. Heard in London as a major musical event, it captures Karajan in one of his most compelling Bruckner interpretations: noble in breadth, rich in sonority and shaped with commanding architectural sweep.

The Vienna Philharmonic’s radiant blend of strings and brass is heard here at the height of its powers, making this a remarkable document of Bruckner performance in concert. Contemporary critics hailed it as one of the finest Bruckner performances London had heard in years, and the new restoration opens out the superb mono source with greater depth, bloom and a fuller sense of the Royal Festival Hall acoustic.

We also mark Sir Adrian Boult this week, following the 137th anniversary of his birth on Wednesday, with a 10% discount across all 33 albums in our Boult collection. The offer is now live and applies automatically at checkout on all qualifying titles.