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Impressive vocals Manasi Prasad shows promise.

With an awareness of combining technique with populist ideas, Manasi makes the concert a living image. It is not technique alone that impresses but the voice of the artist behind the technique who made the vehicle of her inner necessarily. There is complete thoroughness, perhaps a little more than needed. Limits of technique should not surpass spiritual experience; it is here that Manasi missed her measure.

The youthful enthusiasm works under pressure and the artist tries to do more than feasible, resulting in repetitions and harmonic diversions from melodic progressions; There being so many complicated modulations and transitions it fails to appeal to the emotions of the listener. They may even become monotonous and tiring, no matter how immeasurably difficult they may be.

Manasi’s scholarship centred on two items that she chose to elaborate - saveri and hamir kalyani. Basically, saveri coming up soon after thodi was in poor judgment.

The alapana of both the ragas referred to were executed with emotion, melody and imagination.

The spectrum was clear and convincing, but why beat around the bush? The sangathis were often repeated and the format of the alapana had no configuration or design. It would have been more appealing had it been succinct.

The concert commenced with the varnam in thodi but the usage of panchamam at one or two places in the solfa syllables (chittaswaras) was not in order. Sashivadana in chandrajyothi was a thrilling contribution. The intricate thala - adi, thisra nadai - did not deter Manasi from effortlessly rendering the composition, shankari of Shyamasastry; the elaborate neraval was rather overplayed; she intriguingly avoided swarakalpana after neraval, an unusual practice.

It was in hamir kalyani she struck gold; the live wire of the raga consists in the usage of both shudha and prathi madhyamam and it touches the heart, as it were of the listener.

The raga was covered exhaustively in three octaves in different speeds, although the extension was a part of replication.

The uncommon krithi of Thyagaraja, manamuleda was sensitively presented.

Dwaram Satyanarayana, a seasoned violinist, contributed greatly to the success of the concert.

His playing of hamir kalyani was almost a challenge to the vocalist’s presentation. Ramachandran was throughout helpful but he can afford to be less vociferous.

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