Most Recent Releases

BEECHAM conducts the Berlioz Requiem

by Andrew Rose February 01, 2019

"Berlioz’s astonishing Requiem is a work very dear to the heart of Sir Thomas Beecham. He has in any case a special sympathy for the mixture of passion and fastidiousness, elegance and sonorous curiosity in ...

Toscanini's 1939 Beethoven Cycle, Pt. 1

by Andrew Rose January 25, 2019

"[Toscanini] has seldom given a more impressive demonstration of his capacity to make very familiar music fall so freshly and significantly upon the senses and the mind that the hearer listens to something h...

Harty & Monteux conduct Berlioz

by Andrew Rose January 18, 2019

This year sees the 150th anniversary of the death of one of the great French composers, Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869), and we're marking the year with this special compilation of recording...

Koussevitzky conducts Tchaikovsky

by Andrew Rose January 11, 2019

This is a very special recording: one of only two examples of Koussevitzky conducting Tchaikovsky's "Pathétique" Symphony No. 6, it was captured from a live broadcast of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1946...

Toscanini conducts Richard Strauss

by Andrew Rose January 04, 2019

We ended 2018 with some fine-sounding Toscanini, and we begin 2019 with some astounding-sounding Toscanini, and in doing so mark the 70th anniversary of the death of Richard Strauss with a double-CD containi...

Toscanini's Russian Contemporaries

by Andrew Rose December 21, 2018

For this final Pristine release of 2018 we turn to the NBC broadcasts of Arturo Toscanini, and music by his Russian contemporaries. The earliest recording we present here, his 1939 account of the Shostakovic...

Max Fiedler - German Radio Recordings Vol. 1

by Andrew Rose December 14, 2018

"Fiedler’s purely orchestral studio recordings are a great moment in the history of Brahms interpretation. No matter which performers of Brahms you prefer, I doubt you will hear the composer the same way aft...

Stokowski's British music at the NBC

by Andrew Rose December 07, 2018

“Here’s a Planets crammed full of interpretative incident, superbly played by a legendary orchestra which had never previously set eyes on Holst’s masterwork. Stokowski’s broadcast performance evinces a gia...

Götterdämmerung - concluding Leinsdorf's Met Ring

by Andrew Rose November 30, 2018

"What an experience it must have been to be in the audience that evening to hear such an ensemble perform the first work in Wagner’s tetralogy almost to perfection."- MusicWeb International on Das Rheingold ...

Furtwängler conducts Tchaikovsky and Schumann

by Andrew Rose November 23, 2018

"I wonder whether you've considered releasing his live 1951 Tchaikovsky 6th recorded in Cairo with the Berlin Phil. It's one of Furtwangler's greatest performances far more intense than the 1938 studio versi...

RACHMANINOV plays his Four Concertos

by Andrew Rose November 16, 2018

For this week's release we mark the 10th anniversary of Mark Obert-Thorn's first Pristine releases, which now total an astonishing 141 albums, with a return for Mark to a set of recordings that have played a...

Szell conducts Czech music

by Andrew Rose November 09, 2018

"It is not possible at the hour of writing to say as much about the remarkable performances of Mr. Szell as they deserve. He is evidently a conductor of high rank ... Mr. Szell, in a unique degree, knows ho...

Hans Hopf in Leinsdorf's 1962 Siegfried

by Andrew Rose November 02, 2018

"This uncut "Siegfried" was full of delightful discoveries. I can offer Erich Leinsdorf no higher praise than to say that the beautiful playing of the orchestra brought back may vivid memories of Fritz Stied...