Mazurkas, Volume 2: CD

Among the Polish dance forms that Chopin adapted to his own purposes was the Mazurka, in origin a country dance from the plains of Mazovia, near Warsaw, among the people known as Mazurs. The dance gained respectability in the fashionable ball-rooms of Europe, losing much in the transformation. Chopin, however, relied more on the original rhythm and varying moods of the peasant dance for compositions that transform and elevate the ingenuous into a poetic musical form.