Although his death was not publicly acknowledged, let alone widely known about until after Stalin's reign, the brutal murder of Meyerhold's wife, Zinaida Raikh, less than a month after his arrest was a notorious event.
Biographer Daniel Jaffé has argued that Prokofiev, "having forced himself to compose a cheerful evocation of the nirvana Stalin wanted everyone to believe he had created" (i.e. in Zdravitsa) then subsequently, in these three sonatas, "expressed his true feelings".
This long section begins to slowly pick up and results in the tumultuous, extremely chromatic and violent development.
After reprising a portion of the slow section, a final quick, mocking fragment of the main theme is presented which ends in the only full statement of the key of the piece with a quiet, quick roll of the B♭ major chord in the lowest possible registers of the piano.
"[5] This opening theme quickly decays into an extremely chromatic section which sifts through various tonal centers, none of which seem familiar to the E that began the piece.
The Precipitato finale, once described as "an explosive burst of rock 'n' roll with a chromatic edge",[6] is a toccata[7] in relentless septuple time which boldly affirms the key of the sonata through a more diatonic harmonic language than found in the first movement.
The toccata culminates into a furious recapitulation of the main theme, taxing all ten fingers to the utmost, until the piece finally ends triumphantly in a thundering cascade of octaves.