Prokofiev composed his ballet Cinderella in the period 1940-44. Concurrently he extracted three sets of transcriptions for piano from the work and gave each a separate opus number. This set of ten pieces is generally light and focuses on the shorter sections of ballet, and while it is the largest collection of the three, it is not the longest, that distinction belonging to the Six Pieces from Cinderella, Op. 102, from 1944. The other set is Three Pieces from Cinderella, Op. 95 (1942).

Franz Liszt was also known for transforming his music and that of others, and typically used three methods: literal transcription, paraphrase, and fantasy. The latter two approaches allowed him considerable freedom, often yielding substantially different music from the source work. Prokofiev, however, transcribed for the piano in a fairly literal way, though some shifting of music from one number to another does occur. Ironically, his process of transcribing, in a sense, returns the music to its original guise: Prokofiev usually wrote his larger compositions on piano first, then orchestrated them; and when reducing them back to piano, he often used substantial portions of the original piano score.

Here, he begins with four short sections from the ballet: Spring Fairy, Summer Fairy, Autumn Fairy and Winter Fairy. They appear, respectively, in Cinderella as Nos. 12, 13, 15 and 16. The first opens with a sprightly sort of fanfare, and there follows much gaiety and color. Summer Fairy is dreamy and features swirling figures in the upper register in the middle part. Autumn Fairy begins with menace, as a descending rhythmic motif portends malevolence. The piece ends rather angrily on bass chords. The darker elements arguably come through with more power in the piano transcription here than in the orchestral score. Winter Fairy is wistful and dreamy, much longer than its corresponding number in the ballet, since Prokofiev imports some music from No. 5, The Fairy Godmother.

The fifth piece is Grasshoppers and Dragonflies, which is No. 14 in the ballet, following Summer Fairy. It is playful and rhythmic, the music seeming to leap about with glissando-like gestures. Next comes the Oriental Dance, No. 43 in the full score, an exotic Andante dolce, which actually conjures some of the moods, though not the music, in Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade. Passepied follows, a rhythmic piece full of high spirits. It is No. 21 in the ballet and called Court Dance.

Capriccio sounds capricious and whimsical, and is appropriately marked Allegretto capriccioso. In the ballet it is No. 24, Dumpy's Variation. The ninth piece, Bourée, which is No. 22, the Cavalier's Dance in the full score, is both joyous and stately, again featuring many leaping gestures with glissando-like swirls. Here, the music is probably not served as well on the piano as in the orchestral score, the array of colors being beyond the limited range of the keyboard.

The final piece, named merely Adagio, is a transcription of No. 36 in the ballet and the longest of the ten items, lasting nearly five minutes. It represents the pas de deux between the Prince and Cinderella. The music is in Prokofiev's most richly post-Romantic vein, full of passion and beauty.

A typical performance of these ten pieces lasts eighteen to twenty minutes. Prokofiev transcribed them in 1943 and had them published the following year.



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