This week we continue Franz Konwitschny’s 1959 Covent Garden Ring cycle with Wagner’s Die Walküre, broadcast by the BBC from the Royal Opera House on 23 September 1959. Astrid Varnay, Hans Hotter, Ramón Vinay and Amy Shuard head a remarkable cast in the emotional heart of the cycle, where myth gives way to human conflict, compassion and sacrifice.

Konwitschny’s conducting brings theatrical urgency, dramatic pressure and a keen sense of balance between stage and pit, while the BBC’s 1959 broadcast sound preserves a vivid sense of Covent Garden in performance. Pristine’s Ambient Stereo XR remastering opens out the original recording with warmth, depth and presence, allowing this great live Walküre to speak with renewed immediacy.

We also mark Igor Stravinsky’s birthday this week with 10% off all Stravinsky recordings in the Pristine catalogue. The discount is active and automatic at checkout, covering a wide range of historic Stravinsky performances, from the great Russian ballets to recordings conducted by Stravinsky himself.

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.