Simon Rattle concerts are doing a London bus impersonation: none for ages, then arriving in droves. After his four Berlin Phil concerts in London last month, Rattle returned for his first LSO date in many years. Compared with the Berlin appearances I attended, this one was in many ways superior.

Messiaen's monumental Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum is coming up for its half-century. It may no longer have the cult status it enjoyed in its early years, and it has its meretricious side. But the five-movement sonic dazzler – chirruping winds alternating with portentous gongs and tamtams – still packs a hell of a punch. Rattle was absolutely on top of the piece, directing with a Boulez-like tension and severity, and the LSO playing was top notch.

In 2002, Rattle performed Bruckner's Ninth Symphony – another work by a devout Catholic contemplating death – in London with his new Berlin orchestra. As a Bruckner interpretation, it was a terrible disappointment: marvellously played, of course, but finicky and superficial, the embodiment of the side of Rattle's musical personality that occasionally seems determined to shy away from the music's essence, especially in the Austro-German tradition.

Nearly a decade on, though, Rattle's approach has matured. Perhaps, working with a new orchestra less freighted by history than the Berliners, Rattle felt less self-conscious. He achieved a flexibility of tempo and phrasing without any loss of the necessary sense of span that so eluded him in 2002. The first and third movements, two of Bruckner's greatest achievements, unfolded organically and idiomatically, making their crises all the more profound. The cosmic loneliness of the music spoke with its own voice. This time, Rattle showed he gets it.