Which probably won't happen, no matter how beloved that recording may be. The biggest selling Classical recordings got more than enough remastering and reissuing when they had a chance of selling. Those days are gone. I'm sure Toscanini worked over with Mal software would be fascinating and receive major press, but I doubt that such reissues would financially justify the cost and effort.
True that, unfortunately the golden days of the commercial viability of Classical Music are long gone.
That said, reading the OP, it is a strange read. It seems to me that by "remaster", the OP is only thinking of transfer from analog to digital and/or format conversion, like the analog quad transfer to DSD for digital multi-channel.
First of all, to get it out of the way, I completely agree to imply any improvement in just re-transferring to a higher resolution is 100% incorrect. Anyone that believes that a transfer from analog to 384Khz will be distinguishable from a transfer from analog to 96Khz is just plain wrong.
BUT
To be fair, the record companies don't just do that. I will leave the judgment of the value of what they actually do to the people here. Note that I am also NOT talking about sound quality, but about obvious differences that are not related to any 'golden ears' claims.
1.- First, the EMI (RIP) GROC series. A very common complaint was about the series is the application of de-noise processing to the original tapes during the remastering process. A lot of people believed that it changed the recording too much. You might like it, you might not, but a lot of those recordings have been remastered again. This time, now Warner, did not apply the de-noise process. Result? THE RECORDINGS NOW HAVE AUDIBLE TAPE HISS! I was surprised that it doesn't really bother me, and those who disliked the GROC series now claim to like the new remasters.
2.- In another example, in the video accompanying the relatively recent issued remaster of Lenny's Beethoven Cycle, you see the remaster engineer applying (and talking about it of course) some digital reverb to the original recording. I don't remember top of my head which one was it, but the engineer was doing this to a recording he mentioned was done at the Jesus-Christus Kirche in Berlin, a recording venue generally acknowledge to give a great sound.
Now, people might like this remasters or not. In the spirit of ASR, I have to say that I am not making general statements re: sound quality or even that I could actually hear the extra/different digital reverb. But, and to connect it back to the OP and try to polish the question into something that IMHO makes more sense to ask, which is:
Does it make sense to manipulate recordings so much recordings that are generally acknowledged to be great in the first place? One thing is try to polish a 78 transfer or a 1930s radio broadcast, a very different one is to change the work of John Culshaw, Gordon Parry and many others whose names I am blanking out on right now.
IMHO, would love to get flat transfers of the original masters just to see if they are satisfactory as is.
Again, all relative, we might be able to hear the difference, hearing is fallible, etc. Just clarifying that is not just about format conversion. For good or bad, depending on your taste, classical record companies do things to the recordings.
Over the course of the thread, I see postings referencing recordings from popular music. Not sure if my ideas apply there. There are different values in recording popular music.
