An early appearance of Messiaen's Turangalîla, the maddest French symphony ever written, was inevitable in the composer's Southbank Centre centenary season. A rare beast in its early decades, this braying, glittering song of sacred and carnal love from the late 1940s has almost become the composer's calling card. A performance nearly always intoxicates, and always summons a crowd. So does its novelty electronic instrument, the ondes Martenot - a slim wailing keyboard trailing four speakers. Audience members inspected it beforehand with the respect you'd give to a spaceship.

Whether Turangalîla is really Messiaen's most solid advertisement is another matter. Esa-Pekka Salonen's febrile account with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard and the queen of the ondes, Cynthia Millar, supplied hothouse exuberance all right. And sultry sighs. And rhythmic bedlam. And cornball harmonies, wending their way up the chromatic ladder to Messiaen's Technicolor heaven. All wonderful in their way, but without a glimpse of moderation, a subtlety of tone, ultimately exhausting over 75 minutes and ten movements.

No stranger to the piece, Salonen launched his attack at fever pitch. Rasping strings beavered away; then the trombones rose, fierce as Godzilla, spewing out their obsessive theme. Millar at the ondes Martenot caught the fever too. Her instrument might not allow any harmonies, but it certainly gave her decibels and an extraordinary colour range. Even if the score was familiar, you could never guess what extremity of sound she'd generate next: honeyed kiss or seagull shriek, galactic vibration or Ken Livingstone whine.

Aimard, tethered to a boring old piano, sounded dully black-and-white. But here as well there was awesome precision - delicacy too when Messiaen and Salonen allowed. Never have I been so grateful for the long perfumed bath of the movement Jardin du sommeil d'amour - a slow, magic garden with the ondes cooing, the piano bird-chirping, and percussive tendrils of plinks and tings.

What we missed overall in Salonen's account was warmth and heart. A serious omission: with its size, its profusions, and naked emotions, Turangalîla is the most generous piece in 20th-century music. You shouldn't come away feeling battered.

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