Steinberg’ masterwork follows in the footsteps of Gretchaninoff’s Passion Week and Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil, but in some respects surpasses both those works. The harmonies are sumptious and opulent, but at the same time, austere and ascetic, befitting both the somber subject of Christ’s Passion and the atmosphere of war, anarchy and militant atheism the composer was witnessing around him. Passion Week was the last major piece of sacred music to be written in Russia before the Communists banned all religious art, forgotten for 90 years until its revival in 2014.