The Crucible studio had been given a stark, communist makeover. Images of Stalin and Lenin hung suspended from the balconies alongside banners exhorting comrades to follow the true path. Between items, the hectoring tones of the central committee (voiced by Simon Russell Beale) could be heard denouncing “formalist perversions” and “bourgeoise dissonance”.
Of course, no Soviet concert hall would have the audience seated on all four sides – that was the innovation pioneered by the Lindsay String Quartet when they established Sheffield’s Music in the Round festival in 1984. But the totalitarian set-dressing helped to establish the climate of fear under which Russian composers were forced to work in the first half of the 20th century.
The programme indicated how the Soviet authorities switched from prizes to purges in the most capricious and bewildering manner. An antisemitic agenda prevented Mieczysław Weinberg’s dreamlike Aria for String Quartet from being considered for the Stalin music prize; yet his great friend Shostakovich won an award in 1946 for his Piano Trio No 2, despite the giddy pleasure the piece takes in traditional klezmer themes.
Within two years, Shostakovich was himself on the wrong side of the regime; and the festival’s exemplary resident band, Ensemble 360, gave a bitterly reflective account of his String Quartet No 7, whose falling three-note opening motif might be a recollection of the fatal knock at the door. Between movements, actor Sara Kestelman read extracts from Anna Akhmatova’s poetic masterpiece Requiem, whose plain-spoken account of hopeless vigils outside Soviet prisons provided a bleak counterpoint to the music.
• The festival continues until 13 May. Box office: 0114-249 6000.
