In all these respects the Artemis Quartet have much to offer. From the opening bars of No 5 it’s plain that they’re not going to pull any punches, never shortening or lightening notes unless explicitly so instructed by the score. Their entire first movement is sustained at the maximum level of intensity, just as it should be, and the fearsome challenges to intonation in the central Andante are fully met. For myself, I crave a more intimate confessional tone in the middle of this movement, and less bustling energy at the beginning of the finale, in order to give sharper profile to the large-scale emotional drama. But these are perhaps personal choices. Both here and in No 7 the Artemis impressively establish their credentials in what I imagine will just be the first of a series of Shostakovich recordings.

In the Piano Quintet I have more serious doubts: not over their playing but over Elisabeth Leonskaja’s. She is well known as a plain-speaking pianist, not over-concerned with nuances of colour or timing. This can pay dividends in terms of long structural lines and determined character. The Scherzo here is especially effective at a slower-than-usual tempo, and the fourth movement is darkly expressive. It’s certainly good, too, not to be emotionally effusive in the neo-Bachian Prelude. But Leonskaja opens the work so laboriously, so doggedly, so literally in her avoidance of pedal, that I would simply not have continued listening had I not been reviewing. Soldiering on, the piano sound in the second movement is bulky and the phrasing dogged and unimaginative. Not an account I shall be returning to, I fear. Recording quality is fine in the quartets but unappetisingly dry in the Quintet.