Libelle Polka

Polka-mazurka: Die Libelle (The Dragonfly), Op.204

If Josef Strauss had not been plagued by illness, which resulted in his death at the age of forty-three, and if he had been as ambitious as his brothers, he might well have turned out the greatest composer of the three - not necessarily of dances but of more ambitious forms of music. Even so, he was a brilliant exponent of the polka, including the hybrid form the polka-mazurka, which ingeniously combines the polka step with the uneven triple-time of the mazurka. The Dragonfly, with its prettily scored main theme, is one of the most attractive of its kind.