This week’s new release brings Victor de Sabata to Carnegie Hall in 1951, conducting the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York in two CBS broadcasts drawn from March concert performances. The repertoire is wonderfully varied: Barber’s Overture to The School for Scandal, Schumann’s Piano Concerto with Claudio Arrau, Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, and a Wagner sequence culminating in Eileen Farrell’s Liebestod and Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene.

The source tapes had suffered significant degradation, but careful XR remastering has produced excellent results, with the vocal material especially impressive. Farrell’s Wagner has tremendous presence, while De Sabata’s conducting is full of colour, theatrical force and old-world authority. It is a rare chance to hear this legendary conductor away from his familiar studio legacy and in the charged atmosphere of New York concert performance.

To mark the anniversary of Richard Strauss’s birth on 11 June 1864, we are also offering 10% off all our R. Strauss recordings this week. From Salome and Der Rosenkavalier to the great tone poems and the Four Last Songs, this is a catalogue full of orchestral glamour, operatic danger and late-Romantic afterglow.

This week we present Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd in the composer's own revised two-act version, drawn from a historic BBC studio recording broadcast in November 1960. Conducted by Britten himself and featuring Peter Pears as Captain Vere, the performance captures one of the twentieth century's greatest operas at a pivotal moment in its evolution.

Remastered in Ambient Stereo XR, the recording emerges with remarkable clarity, atmosphere and dramatic power. Joseph Ward's moving Billy and Michael Langdon's chilling Claggart lead a distinguished cast in a performance that combines historical importance with compelling musical and theatrical immediacy.

Also this week we mark the 75th anniversary of the death of Serge Koussevitzky, one of the twentieth century's most influential conductors. As Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, champion of new music and mentor to a generation of musicians, Koussevitzky helped shape the modern orchestral world and remains a towering figure in musical history.

Bruno Walter’s profound connection to Mahler lies at the heart of this week’s new Pristine release: a towering live 1948 Carnegie Hall performance of the “Resurrection” Symphony with the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, Westminster Choir, Nadine Conner and Jean Watson. More than historical documentation, this is Mahler interpretation passed almost directly from the composer’s own world into sound.

Coupled with Walter’s blazing 1953 account of Bruckner’s Te Deum, this new Ambient Stereo XR restoration brings renewed depth, presence and dramatic force to two great choral masterpieces of the Austro-German tradition. Monumental music-making, human at its core.

Also this week, we celebrate the centenary of Miles Davis with 20% off all Miles titles in the Pristine catalogue, from Kind of Blue to the First Great Quintet recordings. One of the few musicians who genuinely changed the direction of modern music multiple times over, Davis remains as restless, elegant and influential now as ever.