Gallai Péter - Szállj fel magasra! (2026)

Péter Gallai's first solo album was released on June 5, 2026, a selection of the late singer, keyboardist and composer genius's songwriters and performers. The main interesting feature of the CD is the previously unreleased 1974 demo of Nautilus, as well as the first hit of the Piramis band, Ne bántsd a madarakat, which radio recording was also released on official audio for the first time. A serious gap has been filled, so let's rejoice and head to the record store... or not?

As time goes by, I am increasingly wary of picking up Moiras audio recordings. Because no matter how big the names are, no matter how promising the titles are - in a good part of the cases, the smile quickly fades from the face of the one-time music listener. Either the unqualified sound quality, or the oddities of the editing, or the even stranger covers, which are not necessarily directly related to the audio material, or the illegible texts that do not even know the basics of typography, we are forced to grieve. Fortunately, this time we have more or less escaped the black soup. Although it is not perfect, this author-performer selection is basically fine. An important and good album, with which an old debt of the domestic sound recording publishing has been repaid.

Unfortunately, the paper form was still somewhat useful because the cover and booklet texts, which obviously look great on the monitor, are practically unreadable in print. So, you have to specifically take a photo and then send it back to the monitor if the average person wants to read the attached information. This is especially true for the fifty-plus and sixty-plus age group that makes up the target audience of the publication. But that is almost the end of the negatives. Of course, one can always argue with the editing, and sometimes one must, - we will come back to this a little later - in one or two places the sound quality also brings the deep unpretentiousness of the North Balkans, but basically the CD is fine.

Pressed, galvanized factory disc. Normal case, with CD tray and printed booklet. Big things in today's world, let's appreciate it. The letters are unfortunately illegible here and there, but the printed content is more or less okay. The lyrics of singer-guitarist Gábor Heilig Favágók, the poem about Gallai by lyricist Péter Fábri, and the recording data. It is also good that the latter has relatively few errors. Of course, one could dwell on such things in detail, for example, that the recording of Bolgod ember featured here was actually made in 1976 and that the release was only postponed to the following year thanks to the insidious work of Péter Erdős, but that would be unnecessary. Anyone who is interested in such things has known this for a long time. On the other hand, Aunt Mari, who fifty years ago, as the frail Mariska, was fond of Révészék, certainly cannot read. She is happy to put the CD in the player and hear her favorites again. She may not even be bothered by the inferior sound quality.

The cover image and the bird couple on the CD label are particularly witty. Tasteful, beautiful and fortunately not overly explained. After the Ős P. Box IV LP, here is another album cover that is so connected to the music on the disc that I don't feel totally stupid looking at it. For example, a band photo from Bikini could have been included among the archive photos, but then where would the trademark Moiras editing have gone...

The sound is also pretty much fine. Hopefully, the days when recordings from different sources would sound at different volumes on a Moiras selection are finally over. This has now been nicely normalized. There's not much change, but at least they worked on the new mastering and listening to it at the same time, after the ear gets used to it, it might even be pleasant to listen to. Even with the fact that the source of the recordings in some cases was definitely YouTube, and moreover, not the official material from the publishing topics, but whatever was uploaded by the idiots - in other cases the mp3 is okay. We've come to this. From another perspective, however, it's a sloppy, hasty, undemanding piece of work, and it's up to the individual to choose how they will evaluate this CD. Now, let no one come here with unnecessary half-truths, or with an unwelcome proctor with an old-fashioned explanation. Several of us measured and compared the content of the disc with available online sources, and in the case of Piramisok, with the first-generation digitized versions of the original master tapes. See, what good is a closet of work material left over from the exhausting preparatory work many years ago…

Anyway, I took the Szállj fel masra CD, tried it on my computer, with the cheap Creative speaker set worth tens of thousands of roubles connected to it, and also tested it on a serious sound system. Apart from the one rare demo recording and the songs Bikini and Kováts Kriszta from a crappy source, it sounds pretty much normal throughout. At the same time, it works as a coherent collection. Thank God! Okay, this is not a hi-fi or high-end release, but it doesn't want to be. Szállj fel masra is simply a good selection of the favorite Gallai songs of our youth, and it more or less lives up to that.