The Whalehead Club is located in Currituck Heritage Park on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, near where the Wright Brothers tested their first glider at Kitty Hawk; it was built in 1925 as a private residence for industrialist Edward Collins Knight, Jr. and his wife. It received its present name from its second owner, who redesigned it as a recreational facility for the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II.

Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville, violinist of the royal chapel and just a bit younger than Rameau, is one of those French composers of the late Baroque generally relegated to the summary paragraph in historical surveys. His music is not terribly common on recordings, and the Brilliant label's resurrection of this late 1990s recording on Archiv, despite dreadful sound, is welcome. These little "sonates en symphonies" are interesting in several respects.

The full title of this disc, Richard Coeur de Lion: Troubadours and Trouvères at the courts of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionheart, Marie de Champagne and Geoffrey of Brittany (12th century), gives an idea of just how diverse and dispersed the sources of this music were, and the variety is reflected in the musical styles. The trouvères, based in the north of what is now France, spoke langue d'oïl, "Old French," and their melodies tended to be melismatic and freely invented.

Everything that could be desired in a historically informed performance of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos is presented in Philip Pickett's brilliant set with the New London Consort, released in 1993 on L'Oiseau Lyre. This version with period instruments and an ensemble of a size according to Baroque norms is much more than a dry run-through of these beloved works.

This Opus 111 disc, performed by Alla Francesca, a vocal and instrumental ensemble that focuses on music of the 12th through the 15th centuries, is devoted to songs by the 13th century cleric, Gaultier de Coincy. Gaultier, who considered himself primarily a poet, left a large body of work, including two books of Les Miracles de Nostre-Dame, the source of the fourteen songs recorded here, but he also provided music for his songs, usually arranging preexisting melodies.

The tango compositions, impressionistic extensions of the art, by Astor Piazzolla (Argentina) and Thomas Fortmann (Switzerland) are mixed here to wondrous effect. Actually, two of Fortmann's compositions bookend seven pieces from Piazzolla. The first piece is the 18 and one-half minute title track by Fortmann. Strings, sad and plaintive, are supported by cello in this piece for a string quartet. The quartet here is the Tirana String Quartet. The coda is a bit of Weimar, Germany, sung auf Deutsche by Bruno Ferrari.

Ukrainian composer Valentine Silvestrov is frequently grouped with other Eastern European composers like Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, and Henryk Górecki (with the British John Tavener sometimes thrown in), as a "holy minimalist." The composers in fact have very different and individually recognizable styles, but they do have in common harmonic languages anchored in tonality (or modality), austerity of means, and a predilection for works with a contemplative, mystical tone.

As Austrian pianist Till Fellner has aged, his performance style has naturally matured. This CD of Beethoven's Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos shows Fellner is still impetuous but more commanding, still virtuosic but less demonstrative, and still playful but less prankish and more thoughtful. His touch is generally light, as in the Fourth's airy closing Vivace, and often legato, as in the Fifth's lyrical central Adagio, but he displays plenty of power in the Fourth's dramatic Andante and the Fifth's mighty opening flourish.