While the later works of George Antheil tend to be much tamer than raucous early ventures such as Ballet mécanique (1924) and the Sonata Sauvage (1923), the young iconoclast of bygone years occasionally bobs to the surface in the Fourth Piano Sonata (1951). By the time this work was composed, however, Antheil's brash audacity had mellowed into the subtle cynicism of middle age; the sheer physicality of the earlier works is considerably less evident.

In the late 1920s and thereafter, Antheil increasingly embraced many of the neoclassical principles championed by Stravinsky. Consequently, the Fourth Sonata is truer to the principles of sonata form than Antheil's works, composed in the early 1920s, that he named "sonata." Indeed, the first movement comes complete with clearly defined first and second thematic areas, a development section, including retransition), and recapitulation. Recalling traits of his earlier style, Antheil overlays the foundation of boogie-woogie rhythms with distinctively angular melodies. The slow central movement again reflects the influence of sonata tradition, exhibiting a refinement less in evidence in Antheil's earlier works. Instead of fracturing an idyllic melodic line with a sudden tone cluster, as he might have done a quarter century earlier, Antheil merely it go a little awry by using subtle harmonic suggestion, even indulging in occasional moments of uninterrupted repose. The work closes with a furious Presto that allows Antheil to indulge his more riotous tendencies. Employing the extreme ranges of the keyboard, this movement often blurs the line between distinct polytonality and more purely textural tone clusters. Exaggerated—though deliberately dispatched—gestures recall the bombast of earlier works. Antheil also lends the entire composition a particular cohesion by revisiting and reworking themes from the previous two movements.

© Jeremy Grimshaw, All Music Guide