Eight remastered classical recordings you need to hear

In the magazine this week I’ve written about spectacular new advances in the art of remastering vintage classical recordings. Many restoration engineers are removing hiss and correcting pitch so that historic performances are no longer muffled or distorted. But one of them stands out from the rest: Andrew Rose, whose Pristine Classical label is more interventionist than others. In particular it uses something called ambient stereo to spread the mono output between speakers. This yields a more lifelike sound than the original microphones were able to capture. In many cases the results are astonishing.

The Spectator and Pristine have put together a terrific offer for our existing and new subscribers – visit new.spectator.co.uk/pristine and log in with your web ID for a free download. Here are some of my top recommendations. NB: you won’t find them on Spotify. All the recordings are available as CDs, though they’re not included in the subscription offer.