This remarkable release of music starring the unsurpassed talent of Joan Sutherland combines the classic and the rare in a 2CD album release. The classic is her 1959 recording with Peter Pears and Sir Adrian Boult of Handel's opera Acis and Galatea, in a superb new stereo XR remastering by Andrew Rose.

"Joan Sutherland is a perfect Galatea ... Her singing of "Hush the pretty warbling choir" and "As when the dove" puts her on a pedestal of classic elegance" - The Gramophone

It's one of the classics of the recorded catalogue, with Sutherland's interpretation never bettered.

Also included are two recitals where La Stupenda is joined by husband Richard Bonynge at the keyboard - piano and harpsichord - for a series of songs and arias drawn largely from the later baroque and classical eras. Once again her performances are exquisite in these rare recordings, a number of which may be getting their first outing in this release.

On the morning of Sunday, 14 November, 1943, 25-year-old Leonard Bernstein got a call from the New York Philharmonic. Bruno Walter was too ill to conduct that afternoon's 3pm broadcast concert in Carnegie Hall. Could their newly-appointed assistant conductor step in? No, sorry, there wasn't time to rehearse with the orchestra...

A very few hours later the young composer/conductor stepped onto the podium for the first time ... and brought the house down. In the middle of a war it was front page news the next morning. Hear that concert, as broadcast nationwide by CBS radio, in this amazing new release from Pristine, and find out what the fuss was all about! Truly a moment of history in the making.