The Love for Three Oranges has generally been Prokofiev's most popular opera, though in the latter part of the twentieth century War and Peace (1942 - 1951) garnered as many performances and far more recordings, and The Fiery Angel (1919 - 1927) also gained wide currency. What has made the music of the Love for Three Oranges more familiar than his other operatic fare is the popular concert suite derived from it, Op. 33bis (1924) and this pair of piano pieces. The March has been transcribed for several different instruments and band ensembles, in fact, and was used as the theme for an immensely popular American radio show in the mid-twentieth century called "Your FBI in Peace and War."

Prokofiev fashioned extremely effective transcriptions of these two numbers from the opera, making them sound quite native to the keyboard genre. The March first appears in the opera just before Truffaldino attempts to make the melancholic Prince laugh. In this piano version, the rhythms are less springy, but the pungent dissonances have more color and bite, and the famous march tune manages to sound both suave and sassy. The Scherzo is heard in the opera at the outset of the Prince's search for the three oranges. This piano version is just as perky and nearly as colorful in capturing the fantasy of the orchestral rendition.

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