Here’s some overmatter from the Messiaen centenary last year. The 14-CD EMI set is one of those incredibly useful, disarmingly cheap, EMI completist pull-togethers, this one boasting classic Messiaen moments like Previn’s 1977 Turangalîla- Symphonie, Dorati’s penetrating 1964 Chronochromie, Rattle’s Eclairs sur l’Au-delà, Martha Argerich’s and Alexandre Rabinovitch’s Visions de l’Amen and Messiaen’s own performances of his organ works. How does this new set stack up against Warner Classics’ 2005 18-disc Messiaen Edition? Yvonne Loriod’s 1973 Vingt regards makes EMI’s Michel Béroff sound mannered; Nagano’s Turangalîla (with Pierre-Laurent Aimard) on Warner is the state-of-the-art modern performance, and the punk intensity of Boulez’s 1971 Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum is unmatched; however the Labèque Sisters’ Visions de l’Amen is timid and colourless. But there’s surely room for both boxes in your life.

For those wanting to look deeper into Messiaen’s evolution and history, the Accord set of early recordings featuring Messiaen, Loriod and contemporary acolytes is essential. The set begins with Messiaen’s and Loriod’s 1962 recording of Visions de l’Amen (their second version; an original 1949 account is lost to hopeless sound) and it’s a cunningly paced, keenly nuanced performance where articulation and timbre have been carefully considered. Loriod’s 1956 account of the Vingt regards has a thrilling atmosphere of discovery, and the Catalogue d’oiseaux she cut in ’59 has bravura attack, although her later Erato set is more seasoned.

In the mid-1950s Pierre Boulez’s Domain Musical society gave many Messiaen premieres, and Boulez’s account of the insanely exacting Sept Haïkaï and a joyous performance of Oiseaux exotiques from Rudolf Albert, recorded at Domaine Musical events, enjoy a marvellous sense of time and place. Messiaen’s own recording of the Quartet for the End of Time, featuring cellist Etienne Pasquier (with whom he was interred in Stalag VIII-A), is technically wobbly and shrill by modern standards, but has a rooted emotional authenticity that never tries too hard to make its point. The only low-point is Maurice Le Roux’s Turangalîla: an apparently fine performance, but the recording is so lamely transferred it’s impossible to tell either way.