Squeezebox

?Who Stole the Polka? is the second volume of pieces that accordionist Guy Klucevsek commissioned from composers ranging widely over the contemporary new music scene in the mid-'80s. For pure wicked fun, it contains several absolute classics of the admittedly obscure genre. Fred Frith, allowing that he had little idea of what a polka actually was, contributes the deliciously awkward "Disinformation Polka," full of stop-starts and hesitant shouts of "Hey!" There's even an example of that rare breed, the hardcore punk polka, propelled frenziedly by Elliott Sharp.

… Klucevsek … commissioned a plethora of contemporary composers, ranging across the musical spectrum, to write him some polkas. The superb results are chronicled on the present disc and its companion, ?Who Stole the Polka?. Sometimes (well, oftentimes) the relationship between the polka fans know and love (or hate) and the pieces herein is tangential, but one can usually locate that two-beat rhythm in one guise or another. Klucevsek's own "The Grass, It Is Blue" polkas with passion, as do Steve Elson's "From Here to Paternity Polka" and William Duckworth's "Polking Around." Pieces by Anthony Coleman and the late Tom Cora use more oblique strategies, commenting on the form while melding it to others. …

Squeezebox frenzy on this collection that features the talents of the finest accordionists in the classical and jazz worlds - Peter and Mady Soave, Richard Galliano, Sebastiano Zorza and Denis Biasin. They perform a variety of settings: solo, duo with Nando de Luca on piano or Hamilton de Hollanda on mandolin, or as part of a quartet.