Prokofiev arrived in Moscow by train on 20 January in company with his wife Carolina (‘Lina’), née Codina, a soprano of Ukrainian-Spanish parentage whom he had met in America and married in 1923, shortly after leaving the United States to base himself in Europe. Before crossing the Soviet border, they stopped off in Riga to give a concert. An acquaintance from his student years invited the couple to his apartment for lunch. In the course of their conversation, their host produced a portrait photograph of Myaskovsky – almost certainly, the one which appeared on the frontispiece of the special ‘Russia’ issue of Musikblätter des Anbruch (and is also reproduced as the frontispiece of the present volume). ‘I was amazed at the change’, Prokofiev wrote in his diary later that day: ‘the boring appearance, the stony stare’. His reaction to the image is revealing: the subject's haunted expression, the searching intensity of his gaze registered merely as uninteresting, and the photograph itself as a poorly posed shot.

Myaskovsky came to his hotel to welcome him: Prokofiev found his former classmate charming and refined as of old and concluded that the photograph must have been taken at a bad moment. Although both were pleased to see one another, neither felt wholly at ease at this first encounter. The youthful prodigy who had left Russia in 1917 was returning as a figure of international renown: he felt a considerable weight of expectation and was anxious not to disappoint. Myaskovsky was also somewhat apprehensive, wondering how Prokofiev would be received and what he would make of musical life in Moscow. The homecoming of someone whom he regarded as the greatest living composer had an enormous personal significance. Since their resumption of contact, he had avidly followed the younger man's career and written regularly to communicate his admiring responses to Prokofiev's recent work as he became acquainted with it. The tone of these letters is at times striking.