This week’s new release brings together János Starker’s celebrated 1957-59 Columbia recordings of Bach’s six Suites for Solo Cello. These are performances of extraordinary discipline, clarity and physical presence: Bach not as distant monument, but as living sound, shaped by bow, string, wood and breath. Starker’s playing is lean, articulate and intensely alive, with each dance, prelude and sarabande given its own distinctive weight and movement.

The original recordings have been newly XR remastered by Andrew Rose, with Ambient Stereo processing applied to the earlier mono material, while the later true stereo recordings have been preserved and remastered as such. The result is a striking transformation, opening the sound and bringing the listener much closer to the cello itself: the grain of the bow, the resonance of the instrument, and the remarkable authority of Starker’s Bach.

Also this week, to mark the anniversary of Alfred Cortot’s death on 15 June 1962, we are offering 10% off all Pristine recordings featuring the legendary French pianist. Cortot remains one of the most compelling and individual pianists on record: poetic, volatile, visionary, and never merely correct.

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.