Sarcasms (Avis

Prokofiev’s Sarcasms - which were written at the height of his pre-Revolutionary “leftist” period between 1912 and 1914 - are often derisive in phrasing, percussive in articulation and hard in texture but they are not as unsympathetic as they might seem. As the composer himself said of the fifth and last of them, “It sometimes happens that we laugh cruelly at somebody or something but when we look at it more closely we see how pitiable and unhappy is the thing we have been laughing at. Then we begin to feel ill at ease. Our laughter echoes in our ears but now it is ourselves that we are laughting at.” So, after the hammered rhythms of the first (Tempestoso) and the unpredictable aggressions of the second (Allegro rubato), the lyrical middle section of the third (Allegro precipitato) is not entirely foreign to the spirit of the work. There is, however, little of that conciliatory kind of thing in the dangerously deranged fourth piece (Smanioso) or even in the slower middle section of the otherwise obsessive fifth piece (Precipitosissimo).

R.R.Avis