This week’s new release is Jörg Demus’s 1955 Westminster recording of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I. Demus was only twenty-six when he recorded both books at the Mozart-Saal of the Vienna Konzerthaus in July 1955, yet Bach was already deeply familiar territory: by twenty-one he had performed the complete Well-Tempered Clavier in four Vienna recitals. The result is poised, transparent piano Bach, lightly pedalled and unusually free of grandstanding.

The original mono recording is very fine, and this new Pristine Ambient Stereo XR remastering opens out the piano with greater air, tonal bloom and separation between the contrapuntal lines while retaining the character of the 1955 source. Book I appears this week; Book II follows next week, allowing Demus’s remarkable youthful cycle to unfold in two complementary instalments.

Our special offer this week marks the 130th anniversary of Anton Bruckner’s death on 11 October 1896. All Pristine Bruckner recordings are reduced by 20% from 4 to 10 September, with the saving applied automatically at checkout.

This week’s new release is Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major, “Symphony of a Thousand”, recorded live at Carnegie Hall, New York, on 9 April 1950. Leopold Stokowski conducts the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, eight soloists and three choirs. Stokowski had attended Mahler’s own Munich premiere in 1910 and conducted the American premiere in Philadelphia six years later, giving this performance an unusually direct link to the work’s early history.

The surviving CBS broadcast captures the enormous forces with remarkable excitement, including an additional brass choir stationed in the Carnegie Hall dress circle. Newly XR remastered, the recording gains greater clarity, presence and definition while retaining the scale, urgency and atmosphere of the original live performance.

Our special offer this week marks the 108th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth on 25 August 1918. All Pristine recordings featuring Bernstein are reduced by 10% from 28 August to 3 September, with the saving applied automatically at checkout.

This week’s new release is Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the world premiere performance from the Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh, on 11 June 1960. Benjamin Britten conducts the English Opera Group Orchestra, with Alfred Deller as Oberon, Jennifer Vyvyan as Titania, Owen Brannigan as Bottom and Peter Pears as Flute, preserving the work at the very moment it first reached the stage.

The performance has a freshness no later studio account can quite reproduce, while Britten’s extraordinary fairy-world orchestration gives the recording a colour all its own. The BBC source is remarkably fine for 1960, and the new Pristine XR Ambient Stereo remastering opens out the Jubilee Hall acoustic while retaining the focus and character of the original, giving the harps, percussion, keyboards, strings and voices a wonderfully natural sense of space.

Our special offer this week marks the 68th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s death on 26 August 1958. All Pristine recordings featuring Vaughan Williams are reduced by 10% from 21 to 27 August, with the saving applied automatically at checkout.

This week’s new release turns to Ataúlfo Argenta, one of the most gifted conductors of his generation and one whose career was cut tragically short at the age of forty-four. The programme brings together his 1953 Paris recordings with the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in Albéniz’s Iberia and Turina’s Danzas fantásticas, with vivid Kingsway Hall stereo sessions from New Year 1956-57 featuring the London Symphony Orchestra in Rimsky-Korsakov, Granados and Moszkowski.

The contrast is fascinating: Spanish music from the inside in Paris, then Spain refracted through Russian, Spanish and German-Polish imaginations in London. Argenta brings rhythmic lift, colour and an instinctive feel for the music’s accent throughout, while the early Decca stereo recordings provide spectacular orchestral presence. Newly XR remastered, the release offers a compelling portrait of a conductor whose recorded legacy remains far too small.

We also mark the 75th anniversary of Artur Schnabel’s death with an automatic 20% discount on all Pristine recordings featuring Schnabel this week, from his pioneering Beethoven cycle to Schubert, chamber music and the piano concertos.

This week’s new release returns to Maria Callas’s studio recital recordings with a second volume spanning Puccini, Cilea, Giordano, Catalani and Boito, then Rossini, Meyerbeer, Delibes and Verdi, before closing with La Scala scenes from Cherubini’s Medea and Bellini’s La sonnambula. Tullio Serafin conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala in recordings made in 1954 and 1955.

The emotional centre is Boito’s “L’altra notte in fondo al mare” from Mefistofele, where Callas turns Margherita’s prison scene into something closer to a confession than a showpiece. The 1954 Watford recordings have especially fine presence and clarity, and the new XR remastering brings the voice and Serafin’s orchestral detail into sharper focus while preserving the character of the originals.

We also mark Erich Kleiber’s birthday on 5 August 1890 with 10% off all Pristine releases featuring this exacting and vividly theatrical conductor, from Beethoven and Mozart to Strauss, Handel, Schubert and Ravel.