Like John James Audubon’s landmark multivolume album The Birds of America (published serially between 1827 and 1838), Olivier Messiaen’s three-hour Catalogue d’Oiseaux (published in 1959) is rooted in scrupulous ornithological observation in the wild. That’s easier to grasp in Audubon’s high-def imagery than in Messiaen’s pianistic portraits, which render the sonic fundamentals, overtones, and melodic contours with all-but-fanatical precision yet often strike an uninstructed ear like electric avant-garde volleys of bolts from the blue. Sadly, the two works are alike also in that they document many species that have since vanished. Among contemporary interpreters of Messiaen, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, now 68, is in a league of his own. Beginning his studies at the Paris Conservatoire at the precocious age of 12, he set to work immediately with Messiaen’s pianist wife, muse, and high priestess Yvonne Loriod. Before long, he was a member of the couple’s household. The mandarin musical cosmos in which they dwelled—a hyperspace where the colors of sounds, the mathematics of Indian raga rhythms, Roman Catholic mysticism, and, yes, birdsong in its implicit divinity constantly collided—has been known to overwhelm even stouthearted musical adventurers. Others find their way in at once, on pure intuition. As the son Olivier and Yvonne never had, Pierre-Laurent breathed their air. His occasional outdoor traversals of the complete Catalogue d’Oiseaux, typically broken into four segments presented in his own order from late afternoon to dawn of the next day—have been known to change listeners’ lives. Unlike Loriod’s galvanic yet clinical interpretation, Aimard’s equally virtuosic reading gives off a Zen shimmer of the eternal in the immediate, camouflaging eco-activism behind what some may mistake for nostalgia. Of Messiaen’s 13 sections, each dedicated to a different region of France, placing one marquee species among a large supporting cast, Salzburg audiences are promised six. Figure 90 minutes, though encores are always a possibility. —Matthew Gurewitsch