Prior to composing his Fifth Symphony, Prokofiev relocated to Moscow as a result of his increasing reliance on financial support from the Soviet Union and their threat of revoking their contributions.

[3] Prokofiev incorporated these musical motifs into a piano score over less than a month during his stay at The Composers' House in Ivanovo, under the background of the Soviet Union’s involvement in World War II.

He gave out in a statement at the time of the work's premiere that he intended it as "a hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit.

[citation needed] The second movement is an insistent scherzo in Prokofiev's typical toccata mode, framing a central theme in triple time.

Just as the movement is striving to end with a victorious tone, the music degenerates into a frenzy (rehearsal mark 111), which is stripped down to a string quartet playing staccato "wrong notes" (rehearsal mark 113) with rude interjections from low trumpets, making the ultimate orchestral unison on B-flat sound all the more ironic.

[citation needed] Then, in November of that year, Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra introduced the score to America and recorded it in Boston's Symphony Hall on February 6 and 7, 1946, for RCA Victor, using an optical sound film process introduced by RCA in 1941; it was initially issued on 78-rpm discs and later on LP and CD.