It’s 47 years since a 23-year-old Van Morrison walked into a New York studio and laid down what many believe to be his greatest album.

"You showed everybody else that the limits that they had accepted on invention, expression, honesty, daring, were false," critic Greil Marcus wrote in 2010's Listening to Van Morrison.

Even at this remove, the album retains its mystique.

That is why any tinkering with the recording arouses suspicion.

But this “remastered and expanded” version is a job well done.

The remastering cleans up the sound sensitively while the expanded tracks feature two longer, and fascinating, versions of Slim Slow Slider (a baroque coda, no less, topped by a godly invocation) and Ballerina.

There are also revealing different takes of Beside You and Madame George, the latter shorn of its gypsy fiddle.