2013-07-05T02:01:00+02:00 Radio Prague http://radio.cz/en/section/special/the-glagolitic-mass-a-celebration-of-slavic-culture urn:uuid:57784c1c-a336-5175-afe3-47c636c8da56 2013-07-05T02:01:00+02:00

Our special broadcast for Saints Cyril and Methodius Day explores a famous musical homage to the two missionaries and their legacy, Leoš Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass.

urn:uuid:ce5eec24-04e4-52d6-94ac-a8ea1edce208 2013-06-06T16:15:40+02:00

While thousands of Westerners flocked to Czechoslovakia in the wake of the Velvet Revolution, Don Sparling experienced those dramatic events at first hand. In the second part of a two-part interview, he discusses, among other things, that intoxicating period and the changes that followed.

urn:uuid:0253ba15-62c0-5d79-8b76-97648aec1e5a 2013-06-05T16:02:23+02:00

Few if any Westerners have been living in this part of the world for as long as Don Sparling. Indeed, the Canadian-born academic came to Czechoslovakia in March 1969, just seven months after the Soviet invasion that crushed the Prague Spring movement. He has been here ever since, for the most part living in Brno, where he eventually became head of the English Department at Masaryk University.

urn:uuid:4ac8068b-72c8-5aab-a068-35525c9d421a 2013-05-18T02:01:00+02:00

It is exactly 90 years since the very first regular radio broadcasts in Czechoslovakia began on 18 May 1923. These were humble beginnings, starting in a borrowed scouts’ tent on the edge of Prague. But within just a few years, radio became central to the lives of millions of Czechoslovaks and over the decades the archives here in the Czech Radio headquarters have become an Aladdin’s Cave of sound, a living audio source for anyone wanting to research into twentieth century Czechoslovak history. For our 90th birthday, we joined forces with a group of journalism students in Prague to bring some of these voices from the past back to life.

urn:uuid:985159e2-05a0-5207-860f-b253269f180b 2013-05-08T02:01:00+02:00

Professor Otto Pick was one of nearly 700 Jewish children who escaped the Nazis on a transport to the UK organised by Nicholas Winton, a British diplomat based in Prague. He says he only became aware relatively recently that he was on the now famous “Winton train” and does not know how his family managed to get him on board and save his life.

urn:uuid:141f0151-36d9-5e02-8b34-1f40ac6af596 2013-05-01T02:01:00+02:00

In this special program we speak to the singer and songwriter Marta Topferova about her newest album Milokraj, her relationship to her home country and her love of Moravian folk music.

urn:uuid:41c349c0-3eab-5519-8bf8-d0a2b3e483d9 2013-04-01T02:01:00+02:00

Wherever you are in the Northern Hemisphere, it is likely that sometime around now you are marking one of the dozens of religious or cultural holidays that celebrates the beginning of spring. In this year’s Easter Monday special, we look at the ancient origins some of the peculiar traditions and trappings of the Czech spring celebration.

urn:uuid:5a079a61-539e-5d8d-86c4-c1a6fd8bf8b7 2013-03-07T16:33:11+01:00

Czech President Václav Klaus leaves offices on Thursday, as his second term at the helm of the country expires. Mr Klaus has been one of the country’s most distinct public figures of the post-communist era. Credited with creating a democratic political system and carrying out economic reforms in the 1990s, his presidency has been marked with controversies over his strong views on a number of issues, from global climate change to the EU.

urn:uuid:df5b77b2-57f3-5a53-8822-d349106859cf 2013-01-01T02:01:00+01:00

For Czechs and Slovaks, New Year’s Day has a special meaning as the independent Czech and Slovak Republics emerged 20 years ago today. But what strained their relations while they were still living in one country? Why did Czechoslovakia split against the wishes of most of its inhabitants? And what lessons can be learned from the history of their common country? In our special New Year’s Day programme, we discuss these issues with Jan Rychlík from the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University, and political scientist and historian Juraj Marušiak from the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

urn:uuid:f145288d-2670-54d6-ac5b-060a687834a2 2012-12-31T12:20:25+01:00

On this last day of 2012, Radio Prague has prepared a special music show inspired by some of the events and particularly the mood of the past year. Much of this year in the Czech Republic was marked by corruption and political scandal. We take a look at some of the music that was inspired by these events, and also glance back at Czech songs that have expressed disgruntlement and protest against the political system of the time.

urn:uuid:e6fad18c-d085-57ac-bcf5-649973fe85f4 2012-12-26T02:01:00+01:00

In this Christmas special Radio Prague highlights the work of visionary filmmaker Karel Zeman. His daughter Ludmila Zeman – acclaimed children’s book author & illustrator - remembers her father's approach as a director. Also highlighted: the new Karel Zeman Museum in Prague.

urn:uuid:ee08ee9a-c00a-5515-8e19-4fc607006166 2012-12-25T02:01:00+01:00

A traditional Czech toyshop is full of hums, whirrs, rattles and whistles; such is the diversity of the toys that for generations have been made in Bohemia and Moravia. In this special Christmas programme we look at this country’s toy making traditions. I’ll be joining Ivan Karhan, who knows all there is to know about Czech toys and toymakers – past and present.

urn:uuid:7f320efe-b16b-5334-bfb4-3306d28939cc 2012-12-24T02:01:00+01:00

On Christmas Eve, most Czech families will like every year sit down to special dinner before rushing to the Christmas tree. They will unwrap their presents and some might sing a few carols, and even engage in some traditional Christmas customs such as floating walnut shells, halving an apple or even pouring melted led. But most people are just likely to sit back and watch TV which each year features all the popular fairytales. But what happens in families with mixed backgrounds? How do they celebrate Christmas and explain the different traditions to their children?

urn:uuid:fe5d66a1-6faa-50b3-bb6b-d02c941b61ca 2012-12-18T09:33:18+01:00

Among those closest to Václav Havel was Michael Žantovský. The two were among the founders of the opposition Civic Forum in the whirlwind period of the Velvet Revolution, which toppled Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime after four long decades. Soon after Mr. Havel was elected president on December 29 1989, he made Mr. Žantovský his press spokesperson – and part of a team at Prague Castle that had to learn double-quick how to run a country.

urn:uuid:d6a15a70-0a95-585c-9196-4f56e0e0bd05 2012-12-11T16:17:50+01:00

As always in the weeks preceding Christmas, Jews around the world begin the holiday season before their Christian neighbors. The story of Chanukah is not in the sacred texts of the Torah, and those who celebrate it, do so most often at home, eating various foods fried in olive oil, playing games with chocolate Hanukah gelt (chocolate coins), and receiving presents each of the eight nights of the festival. Some, though, prefer to share this holiday of light, as it is called, with others. To see how it is celebrated around Prague, I headed to a creative workshop organized by the city’s Jewish Museum.

urn:uuid:09cad98b-b41c-5cd0-9ca2-d3f1c2a035ab 2012-11-28T16:37:40+01:00

Leaders of Jewish organizations, government officials and experts from a number of countries came to Prague this week to review the restitution of Jewish property taken during the Holocaust. The conference, which focused specifically on the area of immovable property, was held three years since the adoption of the Terezín Declaration, a document that sought to ease the process. The conference found that although some progress has been achieved, the declaration seems to have failed to accelerate the restitution of Holocaust-era assets.

urn:uuid:f0292d6c-8cbf-5127-8d4f-351f3c70b2f6 2012-11-17T02:01:00+01:00

Olga Hrubá is today a feisty woman of 85. Way back at the turn of the 1950s she campaigned, from exile in the US, to save the life of her friend Miladá Horáková, a Czechoslovak politician executed by the Communists after a show trial. For the following four decades Olga Hrubá, along with her pastor husband, worked – with some success – to protect the rights of religious believers in Communist states.

urn:uuid:6e184adc-7809-5937-b6ac-9a40b0a96c33 2012-11-16T16:17:55+01:00

This past weekend, many people around the Czech Republic celebrated the feast of Saint Martin’s day. Some baked a goose and shared it with family, some waited to see if Saint Martin will really come on a white horse and others just enjoyed the copious amounts of young Saint Martin’s wine overflowing in wine shops and street fairs all over the country.

urn:uuid:a2891c4a-0d46-53a7-9e26-fa64adcd1e94 2012-11-05T16:36:40+01:00

Chicago is home to one of the biggest Czech communities in the United States. It also houses the headquarters of President Barack Obama’s campaign for reelection. Where better to get a sense of how Czech-Americans plan to vote?

urn:uuid:0f5f0938-920a-544d-81c0-99a224e34a10 2012-10-28T02:01:00+01:00

There are more than two million Czechs and their Czech-speaking descendants living outside their homeland, or working abroad indefinitely, and Czech Radio and the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs undertakes a number of activities – partly through Radio Prague – to support those communities, to keep their connections with this country strong and to help them spread knowledge about the Czech Republic.