Impressive in parts
B.R.C. IYENGAR
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The annual festival by Sharada Trust witnessed a few fine performances.
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CONCERTS GALORE Leading artistes grace music season in town.
The months from December to February mark the music season in Secunderabad, with each organisation conducting an annual festival. This year's final festival conducted by Sharada Trust for eight days, which began last week, had popular and leading artistes participating. The festival, which allows free entry for the public, was widely attended.
Varied presentations
The reputation of O. S. Thyagarajan is evident in him being chosen by every organisation for such these festivals. Although such repeated performances at short intervals may generate some boredom, OST takes care to introduce variety in each of his concerts. He has, for every thought, a certain adaptation of musical expression, which very few have and while fortunate to hit, he attains perfection of his action; this speaks of his sense of proportion and logic of intellectual vigour.
OST, in his concert, included a variety of uncommon ragas and diversity of talas, making it different from his recent performances. The varnam in kedaragowla started off well, leading to evarura ninnuvina in mohana (misra chapu), enthanivinvinthura in urmika, (urmika is a rare shudava-shoudava raga, a derivative of simhendramadhyama). Manavinalagiparadata in nalinakanthi was inspiring with raagabhava and classic swarakalpana; Sri Venkatagirsha set to adi thala in surati had all the embellishments of musical structure. The other items were in adi (thisra nadai), rupakam, misrachapu, khandachapu, etc. OST spent considerable time on kalyani (nijadasa varada). The efforts fell much short of excellence. The elaborate raga contained a galore of repetitions and mostly restricted to brigas and a-karas, needlessly extending to nearly an hour, all in vain. It ended up as frustration of expectations.
A few novel elements
Sikkili Gurucharan is a recent find among the promising youngsters and the listener is attracted by his rich voice, vibrant style and nostalgia of GNB. The adaptation of the maestro's inimitable style may be temporarily striking but soon it will prove futile. That he is thinking artist is evident from the format he creates for a concert, although such a design is accepted or aborted.
Contemporary singers have a passionate desire for speed, which, they seem to forget, will ruin the melodious content of a musical piece. The result is a wild chase of, what they think is a technique. Gurucharan is no exception. In his selection he chose from the fundamentals like the geetai and converted them to concert pieces of classicism. Except that they proved a novelty, there was nothing spectacular. Beside the bhairavi varnam, there were some surprise items like paramapavani in ranjani, panipathi sayi in jenkaradwani, evarikai in devamanohari, rajaraja rajithe in niroshi. Again, the thodi krithi, thaye yashoda, proved fuzzy in setting it to a new style but did not impress. RTP was in poorvikalyani set to adi thalam and was just in the routine way. Ambika Prasad on the violin was good but he overplayed in the sense, say, for a piece of alapana, he indulged for a longer time than the main artist. Balaji on the mridangam was accommodative. In short, the concert was good in parts.
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