The Sinfonietta was revised in 1914 and again in 1929, at which time Prokofiev affixed Op. 48 to the work. The Op. 5 version was the first orchestral composition to be recognized by the composer and officially included in his catalog. Soon after writing it he became dissatisfied with its music and it was not premiered until 1914, just after he made the first revision.

Neither the first or second version of this work is commonly heard today and its chief artistic significance is that it appears to have been the first work written in a neo-Classical style. While Stravinsky is generally credited with establishing neo-Classicism in the early-1920s, he was hardly the first to write music in this vein, as Prokofiev's popular Classical Symphony (1916 - 1917) and Busoni's Sonata in Diem Navitatis Christi (1917) attest. But the Sinfonietta is generally overlooked for this consideration because it is almost exclusively known by its 1929 version. Cast in five movements, the Op. 5 is delightful in its Mozartian manner, even if the main theme in the first movement, which reappears in subsequent movements, is too terse and lacking in thematic yield for its many repetitions and variants. The scoring throughout is light, though Prokofiev's more experienced hand provided better orchestration in the final version. This is an interesting but flawed work, whose chief value, then, may be the neo-Classicism its music augured.

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