The long and short of rhythmic brevity...
JITENDRA PRATAP
|
Arnab Chakravorty in his sarod recital was guilty of stretching ragas a shade too often, too long.
|
Merely prolonging the duration of a raga's rendition does not bring any credit to a performer. It is more important for him to present the same with scholastic insight and artistic approach. Once the late sarod legend of the erstwhile Gwalior durbar, Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan, was told by a young music scholar about a singer who had rendered the raga Bihag for an hour and a half. At this, the Ustad laughed and said `so what!' He added, "Young man, it is not proper to prolong the duration of time in the rendering of any raga. One must be sure that the rendering is not repetitive, but instead be authentic and appealing to the listeners." He also mentioned the 78 rpm gramophone recordings of Ustad Fyaz Khan, Inayat Khan, Pandit Onkarnath Thakur, Narayanrao Vyas and several others of their stature who presented the raga's charms within a duration of just three and a half minutes.
These thoughts came to mind after listening to Arnab Chakravorty's sarod recital during the HCL Concert Series at the India Habitat Centre this past week. He rendered the raga Shyam Kalyan for nearly an hour and a half. This raga derived from the Kalyan thaat or the mode has limited scope for elaboration. As such, most of the elder musicians preferred to render it as the secondary item instead of commencing their recitals with this raga.
An overdose
What irked the discerning listeners was the overdose of the aroma of the noontime melody of the raga Suddha Sarang instead of those of the allied ragas Hamir and the Kamod. The accent on the mandra nishadh note was conspicuous in his rendering of the masitkhani gat-toda with the prominent flavour of the raga Suddha Sarang right from the 12th to the 8th beats with the sam or the accent on the first beat in the slow sixteen-beat time cycle of Tintaal falling over the note mandra nishadh. Incidentally, the vaadi or the dominant note in this raga is Rishabh or the Re but certainly not the note Nishadh or the Ni. Another adverse effect of over-stretching the raga's gambit was the repetitive sequences of phrasings in the rendering of the opening alap-jod-jhala and again in the concluding super-fast Tintaal renderings.
Melodic strains
Finally, one would have liked his handling of the instrument to be a little more gentle instead of being quite harsh thereby obliging the frequent re-tuning of the strings of his sarod.
He is quite capable of releasing excellent melodic strains from his instrument, which he certainly did in the brief but highly melodic sequences in the concluding raga Kirwahi of the Carnatic origin.
Kudos to the commendable tabla accompaniment and enchanting rounds of solo variations by Vimal Venkataram, a disciple of the late tabla legend Ustad Allah Rakha and his son Ustad Zakir Hussain.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Entertainment
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
