If composers such as Arvo Part and John Tavener are Holy Minimalists, paring their harmonic language back to basics, then Olivier Messiaen, a devout Catholic, was a Holy Maximalist, his music overflowing with colours so bright that sunglasses might occasionally be helpful.

The Southbank Centre is marking his centenary with a year-long festival, which opened on Saturday with From the Canyons to the Stars, the piece that gives the retrospective its name.

Dating from 1975, it is a 95-minute kaleidoscope of ceaseless activity, sometimes crashingly loud, sometimes so quiet that the ear strains to follow. On a rare London visit, Paris-based Ensemble intercontemporain delivered what felt like a faultless performance, every nuance of tempo, texture and phrasing precisely registered.

Messiaen's musical pantheism drew on the natural world and accordingly he used such lo-tech gadgetry as a hand-cranked wind machine, a duck decoy and a geophone, the last Messiaen's own invention consisting of sand swirled in a giant frame-drum.

Yet while such details are quaint, the piece also requires an orchestra of virtuosos. Under their gifted director Susanna Malkki, every section, especially wind instruments, handled Messiaen's extravagant demands with apparent ease.

If the gorgeousness of the strings occasionally veered towards kitsch, and the percussion sometimes evoked Woody Woodpecker, that was Messiaen's way.

At the work's heart are four soloists who have to display almost superhuman finesse. Two stood out: horn-player Jean-Christophe Vervoitte squeezed previously unimagined sounds from his instrument, while pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard (the festival's guiding spirit) dazzled in solos that blended punishing ferocity and exquisite delicacy.

Altogether more austere is his Quartet for the End of Time, which he wrote in 1940 while a prisoner-of-war in Silesia.

The circumstances dictated the unwieldy line-up of piano, violin, cello and clarinet, but the Nash Ensemble's rhythmically acute performance achieved a blend that seemed utterly natural. That is partly Messiaen's genius but it also demanded rare sensitivity to pull it off. The festival could hardly have had a better send-off.

• Information: 0871 663 2539, www.southbankcentre.co.uk/messiaen.