Colourful finale
JITENDRA PRATAP
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The three-day music and dance festival presented by Kolkata's Classics saw some fine performances.
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PROMISING TALENT Murad Ali, who performed at the festival
The third and final evening's concert of the three-day music and dance festival presented by Kolkata's Classic was this time held at the Triveni Kala Sangam auditorium instead of the basement theatre of the India Habitat Centre where the earlier performances were held. And the Triveni witnessed a large audience turnover.
A brilliant Kathak jugalbandi between Rahul Pawar and Sangita Chatterjee gave a colourful finale to this festival. Sangita is a senior disciple of Saswati Mishra. The duo enthralled the audience with their crisp, intricate and highly polished movements of the traditional Kathak repertoire. Commencing with a shloka set to the slow tempo Rupak tala, they followed it up with gat tukras, padhant and finally a brilliantly rendered jugalbandi followed by a lively sawaal jawaab (posers and retorts) between the two and culminating the recital at a super-fast tempo in the 16-beat beat Teen tala. Hanif Khan provided excellent vocal support. Ipsita Mishra's bole-padhant provided further charm to the duo's performance. Debjyoti Dasgupta gave fine accompaniment on the tabla. Paras on the flute and the lehara by Arif Khan added further grace to the duo's performance.
Proficient musician
Earlier, the evening commenced with a sarangi recital by Delhi's young Murad Ali. He is certainly a highly proficient musician and one recalls with delight his earlier recital a few months back. However his performance on this occasion fell short of his earlier recital's charms. The very choice of the late night raga Bihag was not quite suitable for an evening recital. Besides, the sound of his instrument lacked the rich and mellow tonal flavour and sounded rather screechy. Probably he had a contact mike attached to his instrument. He did impress with his able command over the vocal or the gayaki idiom. Shah Sadarang's well-known composition "Kaise such sovey" set to slow Ek tala was rendered at good length and followed up with another madhya Teen tala piece "Dekho sakhi" - a popular piece with the Gwalior maestros. He ended his renderings in the raga Bihag with a super fast Teen tala piece that seemed to be a tarana. A short rendering of a dhun in Mishra Khamaj came in as a good finale to his recital. Tabla accompaniment by Akram Khan was commendable but for the sound of his bass-pitched tabla which was quite loud because of the mike being too close to it.
The vocal duet or the jugalbandi between the duo of the Mishra Brothers - Deepak and Pradeep Prasad of Kolkata - also suffered because of their choice of the late midnight raga Malkauns being rendered in the evening and concluding with a bhajan in the early morning's raga Bhairavi. Their recital pleased in parts only. The duo had excellent accompaniment by Pradip Palit (harmonium), Biswajit Deb (tabla) and Ghulam Mohammed (sarangi).
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