The Mephisto Polka (S. 217) is a piece of program music written in folk-dance style for solo piano by Franz Liszt in 1882–83. The work's program is the same as that of the same composer's four Mephisto Waltzes, written respectively in 1859–60, 1880–81, 1882 and 1885 and based on the legend of Faust, not by Goethe but by Nikolaus Lenau (1802–50). The following program note, which Liszt took from Lenau, appears in the printed score of the Mephisto Waltz No. 1:
There is a wedding feast in progress in the village inn, with music, dancing, carousing. Mephistopheles and Faust pass by, and Mephistopheles induces Faust to enter and take part in the festivities. Mephistopheles snatches the fiddle from the hands of a lethargic fiddler and draws from it indescribably seductive and intoxicating strains. The amorous Faust whirls about with a full-blooded village beauty in a wild dance; they waltz in mad abandon out of the room, into the open, away into the woods. The sounds of the fiddle grow softer and softer, and the nightingale warbles his love-laden song.[1]
The first recording of this piece was by France Clidat in her traversal of Liszt's works for Decca.[2]