The quintet, with its peculiar instrumentation and its tonal and rhythmic playfulness— described by some as “successfully circusy”—is a prime example of Prokofiev as an ironist and humorist, a superb craftsman who elegantly juggles his material and produces surprisingly sonorous, tonal and rhythmic kaleidoscopes. Humour has long been a central ingredient in Jon Øivind Ness's music, but there has been a development from the anarchistic maximal to the punctuated minimal.