This is a very exciting release: Sir Adrian Boult's only two broadcast concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in astonishingly fine sound quality, from May 1938. These never-before-released recordings include the US premières of Walton's Viola Concerto with William Primrose and Copland's El Salón México.

There's an excellent performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, and a superb collection of more English music: Elgar's Enigma Variations, Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 4, Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad Rhapsody and Holst's A Fugal Concerto. There's even room for Busoni's Comedy Overture.

Hear for the first time the sound of a young NBC orchestra under the baton of the conductor of its inspiration, the BBC Symphony Orchestra - it really is very special indeed!

The NBC broadcasts of Leopold Stokowski continue to prove a rich mine of fabulous and unusual musical riches. Stokowski wasn't shy in his promotion of contemporary American music whilst conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and a good number of the near-two-dozen US composers whose works Stokowski conducted at this time have already seen releases here on Pristine.

This week we add eight more, some of whom may be more familiar than others, all of whom are worth hearing: Morton Gould, Paul Creston, William Schuman, Robert Kelly, Virgil Thomson, Carlton Cooley and Roy Harris. The recordings span Stokowski's time at the NBC - from the Prelude from Kelly's Adirondack Suite, performed for Stokowski's third broadcast in November 1941, to Thomson's suite The Plow That Broke The Plains in January 1944, when Stokowski had little more than a month left with the orchestra. A rich and varied collection in excellent XR-remastered sound.

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Willem Mengelberg (28 March 1871), Pristine is pleased to present the first in a series of releases surveying the conductor’s recordings with the Concertgebouw Orchestra for Telefunken, the label for which he made the bulk of his commercial discs. They will be presented in roughly chronological order, with the present volume featuring all the recordings Mengelberg made in 1937, along with the first he did the following year. 

There are four major works here: Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 and 'Pastoral' Symphony No. 6, and Tchaikovsky's Sixth "Pathétique" Symphony and Serenade for Strings, together with shorter works by Berlioz and Franck. These superb new transfers for Pristine by Mark Obert-Thorn promise to grow into a fabulous set of superlative recordings and performances.