Sounds excellent
ANJANA RAJAN
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Sony Nad’s Legends Forever series is a welcome development.
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Technology may have wrecked our lifestyle, spoiled our posture, encouraged piracy, and irrevocably affected the guru-shishya tradition. But if there is one good thing we can thank technology for, it is that recorded sound has acquired a longer lease of life. For those who collect such gems, Sonynad, the classical music label of Sony BMG, has come out with a whole treasure house. ‘Legends Forever,’ a classical music series, features a range of stars of the 20th Century.
Legends
The series includes maestros who are still with us and those who have passed on. Among the latter are the late shehnai maestro Bismillah Khan, tabla wizard Allah Rakha and sitar exponent Nikhil Banerjee. The featured sitar concert of the maestro is the one he played at the Law Auditorium, University of Chicago, in 1984, two years before his death in 1986 at the age of 55. A full-fledged concert, the performance elaborates the raga Surdasi Malhar, with an alap and jor are followed by a Masitkhani gat in Teen tala and a drut gat in Teen tala.
The recording of Allah Rakha features the Ustad with his illustrious son, a star himself, Ustad Zakir Hussain. Zakir also features in other albums, including the santoor concert with Shiv Kumar Sharma, and a live recording of a Kathak recital by Pandit Birju Maharaj.
Chaurasia’s and Sharma’s hit LP, ‘Call of the Valley’ is celebrated with ‘The Valley Recalls,’ a live recording of the duo’s special thematic concert of compositions such as ‘Peace,’ ‘Love,’ ‘Harmony’ at the Nehru Centre, Mumbai, in 1995.
Pandit Jasraj’s devotional fervour is immortalised in the album featuring ‘Om Namo Bhagawate Vasudevaya,’ ‘Gopalaniranjanam’ and others. Diamonds, they say, are forever. So are gems like these.
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