Król Rozrywki

Qui était Mustafa Kemal, cet officier supérieur ambitieux qui, en 1923, à l’issue d’une guerre victorieuse contre les armées alliées, abolit le sultanat ottoman et proclama la république de Turquie, dont il devint le premier président ? …

Essential: a masterpiece of prog rock music.
Solaris' Marsbéli Krónikák is one of the few shining lights that got unnoticed during that bleak 1980s period of progressive rock, not to mention the fact that very few people in the West ever heard this album. It wasn't until the 1990s and exposure on the Internet, plus someone taking the time to reissue this on CD that the West finally got to hear this amazing gem from this five-piece instrumental band from Hungary. I first discovered the band by reading their entry in the GEPR in the late 1990s.

The mezzo-soprano Dagmar Pecková is giving a very personal gift in the form of this Christmas album. The listener is treated to Bohemian and Moravian carols and to the tender poetry of Christmas songs from seventeenth-century Bohemian Baroque hymnals (Michna's Chtíc, aby spat is included in the collection, naturally). Dagmar Pecková has, of course, also turned her gaze beyond the hills on her homeland's borders. Ultimately, whether it is carp or turkey on the festive dinner table, it is the birth of the Saviour that is celebrated all over Europe. Good King Wenceslas is sung in England and Lulajże Jezuniu in Poland, while Stille Nacht and Adeste fideles are sung in many places in a variety of translations. But what about in Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, or Italy? The musical treasures of those countries are found here as well.