(Progressive) Collegium Musicum - Live - 1973, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

First live album from this outstanding band. MARIAN VARGA is a fabulous organ player and their covers of some classical music to rock and fusion are incredible. Their sound is closer to ELP, but a little more jazzier. Not less virtuoso than EMERSON, FRITZ or VAN DER LINDEN, VARGA deliver us music full of breaks, jazzier and classical parts, and otherwise, drums and also bass solos, as the ability of HAJEK is very noteworthy and the bass lines played by FRESO are quite strong and enjoyable, in the vein of CHRIS SQUIRE. I don't know if they were the Czeschoslovakian answer to ELP, because they appeared at the same time, anyway, I can find some small similarities with THE NICE, but overall, I think these guys could play very nice music and their style is rather unique. Much more original and spontaneous than TRACE or TRIUMVIRAT, that's why they are one of my favourite bands. Rather precious and unique. Five stars.

Third album from the Slovak (well Czech also back then) Collegium Musicum became the Eastern Block’s ELP/The Nice, especially now that guitarist Griglak had left to found Fermata. Actually this could be considered as the group’s fourth album, as the remaining trio had recorded with Pavol Hammel an album called Zelena Posta, but it wasn’t credited to CM. So came this Live album holding four tracks (two aside) that are totally based on reworks of the classical master composers.
Soundwise, there is little doubt that the reduced line-up is limiting the group’s spectrum to an ELP almost-clone (no singing bassist), and not much else! In some ways, the arrangements resemble also Ekseption or Trace, Focus or Finch, as the group seems content of just putting drums and bass parts to the music that’s played on a single organ. You can easily imagine, the Slovaks making incredible sacrifice for a western electric instrument during the Cold War, let alone investing into a second one. One of the things that bugs me is that all of those borrowed passages from the master composers are not acknowledge, therefore making the borrowings grow into rip-offs.
Unlike some other groups like Plastic People Of The Universe (who were regularly busted as they inspired themselves from Velvet Underground and rebellion), it is easy to imagine that CM benefited from a sort of “approval” from the communist regime, since they made easy access to the classical master to the younger generations. Judging by the inside photos from the group’s stage performance, they were at least playing in theatres or movie houses, shows which no doubt were at least not banned from the state police. Nevertheless, I suggest you start your discovery of CM with another album.