Every few years, a prominent classical-music label initiates a series devoted to contemporary classical music. Yet apart from "20-21," the still-active sub-label on Deutsche Grammophon (DG), such well-intentioned projects suffer a truncated, unceremonious end. Born too late, listeners like me resort to patrolling record shops and eBay for essentials such as Columbia's "Music of Our Time" imprint, the sought-after "Avant Garde" series on DG, and BMG's Catalyst line.

Fortunately, Explore Records has reissued several titles in Decca's early 1970s "Headline" series, including the justly revered recording by John Tilbury of John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano along with discs of Olivier Messiaen: Visions de l'Amen; Roberto Gerhard: The Plague; and Toru Takemitsu: Corona.

Though decades old, the recordings still sound fresh and feral, especially the recording of Messiaen's 1943 epic for two pianos, the Visions de l'Amen. Brenda Lucas and her husband, the legendary John Ogdon, all but pulverize their keyboards, pealing crystalline chords and hammering guttural bass notes. The duo easily better the composer's own recording.

I'm also pleased with The Plague, Roberto Gerhard's 1964 setting of the Albert Camus novel. Borrowing techniques from his teacher Arnold Schoenberg's harrowing monodrama "A Survivor from Warsaw," Gerhard (1896–1970) embeds the cold Camus text in snippets of deliberately corny and sometimes crazed choral writing, strident horn tattoos, a suitably wheezing harmonium, and a barrage of percussion. The Plague's reciter, Alec McCowen, makes this disc preferable to the 1996 Montaigne recording with Michael Lonsdale, whose crusty accent (he pronounces "perturbed" as "petoobed") can't match the thin-lipped McCowen's bureaucratic, BBC-brusque impartiality. Corona, a disc of Takemitsu's solo piano music, suffers from too much hiss; yet pianist Roger Woodward's flinty touch fares well against other pianists, who tend to turn Takemitsu into New Age milquetoast.