Polka Polka The polka is originally a Czech dance and genre of dance music familiar throughout Europe and the Americas. It originated in the middle of the 19th century in Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. The polka remains a popular folk music genre in many European countries, and is performed by folk artists in the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland, and Finland, and to a lesser extent in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Ukraine, Romania, Belarus, Russia, and Slovakia. Local varieties of this dance are also found in the Nordic countries, Spain's Basque Country, the United
Polonaise-Fantaisie (Chopin) Polonaise-Fantaisie (Chopin) The Polonaise-fantaisie in A-flat major, Op. 61, is a composition for piano by Frédéric Chopin. It was dedicated to Mme A. Veyret, written and published in 1846. It opens with "Allegro maestoso", 3/4 time. This work was slow to gain favor with musicians, due to its harmonic complexity and intricate form. Arthur Hedley was one of the first critics to speak positively of the work, writing in 1947 that it 'works on the hearer's imagination with a power of suggestion equaled only by the F minor Fantasy or the fourth Ballade', although Arthur Rubinstein, Leff Pouishnoff, Claudio Arrau