Tales of an Old Grandmother Op.31 (1918)

Like the Four Pieces Op.32, the Tales of an Old Grandmother Op.31 were written towards the end of 1918 shortly after Prokofiev’s arrival in New York – 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 Prokofiev’s music, or his reputation, and who expected to be shocked or scandalised in some way, would have been surprised how congenial the two works are. The Tales of an Old Grandmother must have been particularly surprising since, far from confirming his status as an enfant terrible, they revealed a vulnerable young composer homesick for his native Russia.

Grouped under the epigraph “Certain memories are half-forgotten, others will never be forgotten,” all four movements of Tales of an Old Grandmother are in minor keys and basically slow tempi. If the harmonies and rhythm of the outer sections of the opening Moderato offer just a faint anticipation of the grotesque march that was about to guarantee the success of A Love for Three Oranges at Chicago Opera, the distant melody high in the right hand in the middle section indicates how far from irony Prokofiev’s thinking was at this time. The brief but intimately melodious Andantino is an even more explicit expression of nostalgia. Nothing else by Prokofiev reveals as close a kinship to Mussorgsky as the Andante assai, the heavily trudging outer section of which inevitably call to mind Bydlo in Pictures at an Exhibition. The closing Sostenuto seems to issue from somewhere not far above the depths of melancholy and indeed, after a quicker gig-like (12/8) but scarcely more cheerful middle section, it sinks even lower on the resumption of the slower tempo in the closing bars.