French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard emerged in the late ‘70s as an authoritative interpreter of contemporary music, and his mastery has never diminished. He studied under Yvonne Loriod—the wife of the great Olivier Messiaen—and his devotion to Messiaen's compositions has remained constant ever since, whether through finely pitched navigations of his birdsong masterpiece Catalogue d'oiseaux or a hurtling rendition of “Première communion de la Vierge.” Aimard also became a master of the works of fierce modernists like Pierre Boulez and György Ligeti, and his reach extends to impressionism and American mavericks like Charles Ives and Steve Reich.