Charming profundity
THE CENTRALITY of a Carnatic music performance rests on its lofty relevance. Pulls and pressures are dominant in the field to tempt an artiste to confine himself/herself to peripheral petty delights, even if he/she has the instinctive talent to soar high in expositional grandeur. The attitude is to distance oneself from superior motivation. One tendency today is energetic positivism towards speed in music and unbridled swaras. What seems to happen today is that depth-and-crispness technique is being replaced by long-duration speedy alapanas. Music is more than skilled vocal manipulation. It has to be hitched to depth and lofty ideals.
There were strands of charming profundity in soft idiom in the alapana of Bilahari by Ranjani and Bhairavi by Gayatri in their performance for the Krishna Gana Sabha in the Gokulashtami series, which kept the momentum going.
There was a sense of excitement beneath the softened sancharas. The excursions in the tara sthayi of Bhairavi had flashily bouncing thrills and frills. When they sang the Anandabhairavi kirtana, "Tyagaraja Yoga Vaibhavam," the performance took a turn to a contemplative mode only to spring to "Tolijenma" in Bilahari.
Mysore Srikant's (violin) solo versions of the ragas had a fragile coating of creativity. Neyveli Skanda Subramaniam on the mridangam and N. Guruprasad on the ghatam shared a demonstrative tani avartanam.
Sound patantara
Tame in texture, but sound in patantara, the cutcheri of Subhashini Parthasarathy, without any contrivance of voice, engaged the attention of listeners. The alapanas of Sriranjani and Todi were carefully built up on familiar lines. An akara-suddha articulation provided smoothness to her exposition. The selection of songs contributed much to the respectability of the concert. Poorna Vaidyanathan (violin) and Thanjavur Kumar (mridangam) played their roles efficiently.
SVK
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