Symphony No. 4 (Prokofiev)

Symphony No. 4, Op. 47/112 is actually two works by Sergei Prokofiev. The first, Op. 47, was written in 1929 and premiered in 1930; it lasts about 22 minutes. The second, Op. 112, is a large-scale from 1947; it lasts about 37 minutes. Both use musical material originally written for Prokofiev's ballet The Prodigal Son. The two works are stylistically different, reflecting their respective compositional contexts. They are formally different too: the instrumentation and scope of the revision is larger.

Because Prokofiev's Symphony No. 4 is in fact two different works, two different but related examinations are required.

As a concert pianist, Prokofiev travelled worldwide, and toured the United States during the 1925-26 season. In early 1927, he went on a two-month concert tour of the Soviet Union. He planned to return in 1928, but those plans fell through. In 1929, another planned Soviet tour was cancelled, this time because of a hand injury Prokofiev suffered in a car accident.

Throughout this time as a touring virtuoso, Prokofiev also continued to compose. Symphony No. 2 in D minor premiered in Paris under the baton of Serge Koussevitzky in the summer of 1925, to tepid critical response. At the same time, Sergei Diaghilev, the ballet impresario, suggested that Prokofiev write a ballet on a Soviet subject. The resulting piece was Le pas d'acier (‘The Steel Step'), Prokofiev's third ballet for Diaghilev, which premiered in Paris in the summer of 1927. He had also been working on an opera entitled The Fiery Angel, of which several premieres had been cancelled. He decided to salvage some of the material from the opera, and turned it into his Symphony No. 3 in C minor. In late 1928, with the aforementioned Soviet tour cancelled, Prokofiev decided to accept another ballet commission from Diaghilev. This piece, rather than being on futurist themes like Le pas d'acier, was based on a Biblical story: L'enfant Prodigue (Parable of the Prodigal Son from the Bible). The moralistic, Biblical subject matter was not an anomaly; such subjects were popular in the Parisian ballet scene in the late 1920s.

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