Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s Milton Court recital was given over to a single work, Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus. Written in Paris during the last months of the Nazi occupation, it was given its first performance in 1945 by Yvonne Loriod, the composer’s second wife and, later, Aimard’s teacher. A meditation on the Nativity, it is one of the most intoxicating works of the 20th century – an immense dialogue between Messiaen and his God, at once convulsive, beautiful and ecstatic in its expression of unadulterated joy. Its demands are immense, pushing the pianist to extremes of stamina, technique and expression. But in Aimard, long associated with Messiaen’s music, it finds one of its finest interpreters.

He powered his way through it with a combination of commitment and deep sincerity, breathtakingly realising the sensuousness with which Messiaen conveys his metaphysical vision. A devotional serenity pervaded both the opening Regard du Père and the penultimate Je Dors, Mais Mon Coeur Veille, in which chordal progressions sway and hover in rapt contemplation of God’s majesty.

Elsewhere, the swirling songs and dances of men and angels, and the vast fugue that celebrates the wonder of the Creation, had an almost visceral immediacy. Towards the end, Aimard seemed not so much to be playing the music as living it, though the closing Regard de L’Église D’Amour was accompanied by the occasional gasp of effort. The final phrases plunged into an awestruck silence that seemed to last forever before the applause began.