In 1941 the French composer Olivier Messiaen was released from a German prisoner-of-war camp and returned to live in Paris, which was by then occupied by the Nazis. He immediately set himself to writing two enormous religious works for piano duo and solo. One was the Visions de l’Amen, the other, Vingt Regards sur l’enfant-Jésus (“Twenty Contemplations of the Infant Jesus”). They are the focus of the “Messiaen 2015” project (www.messiaen2015.com), a series of events spread out over the year directed and conceived by the 26-year-old pianist Cordelia Williams, who is also the main performer. She came to Messiaen’s music as a student at Cambridge where she achieved a first in theology. Her tutor the pianist-theologian Jeremy Begbie, who oversa