Stravinsky conducts The Rite of Spring, The Firebird

"Who wrote this fiendish Rite of Spring?
What right had he to write the thing,
Against our helpless ears to fling
Its crash, clash, cling, clang, bing, bang, bing?"
Boston Symphony Orchestra concert subscriber, 1924

Exactly 100 years to the week since its notorious, literally riotous première in Paris on 29th May, 1913, Mark Obert-Thorn has returned to the composer's first recording of The Rite of Spring, made in Paris in 1929 and curiously neglected since - quite possibly due to some previously incurable pitch problems which we have now, finally, been able to solve.

It's coupled with his recording a year earlier of the Firebird Suite, in its 1911 incarnation. Both bring to life the composer's true intentions in a whirl of passion, and restore these neglected masterpieces to the catalogue for the first time in a quarter of a century.

Furtwängler conducts Wagner's Ring, La Scala, 1950

"Legends when closely investigated do not always live up to their reputations; not so with this Furtwängler-Scala Ring. Snippets heard on ‘pirated' records in wretched sound had not prepared me for the glory of the whole. Indeed I will go as far as to say that this is simply the greatest performance of the whole cycle I have ever heard."
Alan Blyth, Gramophone, 1976

Wednesday, 22nd May was Richard Wagner's 200th birthday, and Pristine Classical has marked it in style with the completion of one of our finest remasterings yet, and one of the greatest operatic recordings of all time: Furtwängler's incredible 1950 Ring, recorded live at La Scala, Milan, some 63 years ago.

The transfers reviewed above by Alan Blyth were later described "as if they were coming from a phone left off the hook in La Scala's lobby". No so today: full, vivid, and with astonishing clarity, they are truly magnificent to hear in Pristine's new 16-bit and 24-bit remasters.