Four Pieces Op.32 (1918)

Like the Tales of an Old Grandmother Op.31, the Four Pieces Op.32 were written shortly after Prokofiev’s arrival in New York towards the end of 1918 – at much the same time as Rachmaninov and many other Russian musicians who felt they could not prosper in the chaotic conditions under the new Soviet Government. Since his only way of making a living at this stage was as a pianist, he refreshed his repertoire with these two collections of short pieces, giving the first performance of Op.31 in January and that of Op.32 in March 1919.

Those in New York who already knew something of Prokofiev’s music, or his enfant terrible reputation at least, and who expected to be shocked or scandalised in some way, would have been surprised how congenial the two works are. In fact, the Four Pieces are closely related to the “Classical” Symphony which, however, had been first performed in Russia only a few months earlier and was quite unknown in America. While only two of them are based on classical dance forms, all but one of them are pastiches or ironic commentaries of one kind or another. Danza, for example, turns a military march into a rhythmically jerky, slightly grotesque dance with bugle calls in the middle and a surprisingly violent gesture in the last bar. Far from courtly precedent, the Menuetto is a heavy-footed peasant version of the dance briefly offset by an elegant hint of waltz time not long before the end. If the obstinate little Gavotte is the most popular of the Four Pieces, the concluding Valse, with not a note of irony in its dreamy harmonic speculations, is the most inspired.