Rossini’s The Barber of Seville returns this week in Vittorio Gui’s classic 1962 recording, timed perfectly for the 210th anniversary of the opera’s Rome premiere. Il barbiere di Siviglia remains the quickest route to joy in the opera house: comic timing, melodic brilliance, and ensembles that sparkle when the rhythm is right and the style is true.

At the centre stands Sesto Bruscantini’s irresistible Figaro, partnered by Victoria de los Angeles’ luminous Rosina and Luigi Alva’s stylish Count Almaviva. With the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Glyndebourne Festival Chorus under Vittorio Gui’s light, alert direction, the whole performance glows with precision, charm and lift.

And with Chopin’s birthday on 1 March, we’re marking the occasion with 10% off all Chopin recordings for one week only. A perfect excuse to revisit the poetry and fire that keep his music forever young.

In the mid-1930s, Fritz Kreisler returned to the studio to remake four of his most celebrated concerto recordings. These London performances with the London Philharmonic Orchestra capture the violinist in his early sixties: perhaps less effortless than in youth, but richer, deeper and more searching. Newly restored by Mark Obert-Thorn, they reveal the artistry that led one contemporary critic to describe a slow movement as “near the perfection of heavenliness as this old earth is likely to furnish.”

In this second volume, Kreisler brings his distinctive warmth and lyrical authority to concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn and Mozart. Conducted by Sir Landon Ronald, John Barbirolli and Malcolm Sargent, these 1935–38 recordings replaced his earlier versions in the catalogue and became the performances reissued in the LP era, documenting a great violinist in full artistic maturity.

This week we also commemorate the death of Bruno Walter, one of the twentieth century’s most humane and enduring conductors. A close associate of Gustav Mahler and a master interpreter of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner, Walter combined structural clarity with warmth and generosity of spirit. To mark the anniversary, we’re offering 10% off all 41 albums in which he appears in our catalogue.

Bruno Walter’s 1953 Carnegie Hall performance of Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde captures the conductor in late style: unhurried, humane, and utterly assured. Drawn from a live broadcast and newly remastered, this release restores the full presence of the hall and the natural breadth of Walter’s pacing. Set Svanholm and Elena Nikolaidi bring strength and clarity to the vocal lines, while the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York responds with alertness and depth. What emerges is not simply a historical document, but a living, breathing Mahler performance shaped in real time before an audience.

Framed in its original broadcast context by Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, the concert unfolds with remarkable coherence. Walter allows the music space — sometimes strikingly so — and the long arc of Der Abschied becomes the emotional centre of gravity, unfolding with patience and inevitability. The restoration reveals orchestral colour, vocal presence, and dynamic range with uncommon immediacy, allowing listeners to experience the concert as an event rather than an artefact.

On 13 February we also mark the anniversary of the death of Richard Wagner (1813–1883). To commemorate the composer whose influence shaped the musical world into which Mahler was born, we are offering 10% off all Wagner recordings in the Pristine catalogue for one week.