Eminence yes, evidence of course
JITENDRA PRATAP
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The festival of future torchbearers, Arpan, organised by the Delhi-based Asavari served up performances by promising young artistes.
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The two-day Arpan 2005 festival, featuring up-and-coming performers, was presented by Asavari and the India Habitat Centre in collaboration with Art Junction, the Grand Intercontinental, Sahitya Kala Parishad, and the Bharat Shakti Spiritual Cultural and Educational Society at the IHC's Stein Auditorium recently.
The Asavari society was founded by the late Lalita Narayan, mother of the noted Kathak exponent Shovana Narayan, and her Supreme Court lawyer sister, Ranjana Narayan. Revered by all her disciples, she contributed immensely to the training of students. Many an excellent choreographic composition received her guidance with her creative flair and deep insight into Hindu philosophy and thought.
Impressive solos
It was a delight to find that each of the four participating youngsters impressed with their solo renditions, thereby ensuring their rise to fame in the very near future. The vocal recital by Amjad Khan, a disciple of Ustads Mashqoor and Mubarak Ali Khan, in raga Puriya Kalyan was redolent with all the salient features of the Kirana style, The slow Ek tala composition, "Piya tum" was rendered with reposefully executed alap-badhat, and further laced with varying patterns of taan-paltas. With a colourful rendering of the next Teen tala piece, Amjad provided a compact treatment to this dusk-time raga. Excellent accompaniment was provided by Ustad Mehmood Dhaulpuri on the harmonium and by Akram Khan on the tabla.
The opening evening's notable rendering was, however, the superb sarangi recital by the young Fakruddin Dhaulpuri, son and disciple of the well-known harmonium maestro, Ustad Mehmood Dhaulpuri. Fakruddin's choice of the raga Madhukauns, with its oddly derived format, was a challenging one. But this young torchbearer of the future acquitted himself rather well by revealing a good number of the raga's hidden nuances. His neat and tuneful handling of the bow, at times soft and subtle and at others quite bold and powerful, indicated a bright future for him. Subhash Nirwan's superb tabla accompaniment further heightened the appeal of young Fakruddin's performance.
Rizwan Hussain's solo tabla recital the next evening was redolent with numerous rounds of colourful kayadaas, relaas, and parans - all executed with neat and precise handling of his well-tuned drums.
What further impressed was his ability to maintain a steady tempo, which in most other cases tends to be on the increase without the player being aware of it. The gat-toda sequences were, however, the most appealing part of Rizwan's recital. He had excellent lehra accompaniment on the sarangi by Asif Ali.
Rajeev Verma's sitar recital in the season's raga Mian-ki-Malhar was however the most pleasing item and a befitting finale to the music recitals in the Arpan 2005 festival. This raga is a creation of the legendary Mian Tansen with a charming blend of its constituent ragas (Malhar, Kanada and Sarang). Full credit to Verma for his able deployment of the nuances of these three ragas in a balanced manner to give Mian-ki-Malhar its desired flavour. The sitarist rendered the alap-jor-jhala with tunefully executed phrasings followed by gat-todas in Teen tala.
Quite a few of his sweeping flourishes were indeed neat and crisp. Akhtar Husain's tabla accompaniment, besides some of his own solo variations, were indeed outstanding.
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