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Music Season
BRAHMA GANA SABHA
Music, alluring and vivacious
LAKSHMI VENKATRAMAN
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Nithyashree was appealing while Mohan Santhanam was filled with energy.
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Photos: S.Thanthoni
Attractive alapana: Nithyashree Mahadevan
Nithyashree Mahadevan’s concert warmed up half way through with the Tamil viruttam on Lord Muruga in Kharaharapriya in the place of the raga alapana when she came into her own. It was followed by Papanasam Sivan’s ‘Senthil Andavan.’
Earlier ‘Orajoopuju’ in Kannadagowla had a lengthy swara segment. The elaboration of Varali was somewhat repetitive and ‘Maamava Meenakshi’ had niraval and swaras for ‘Shyame Sankari.’
Sherthalai Sivakumar on the violin appeared to be in awe of the vocalist, at least till the main raga alapana — that of Madhyamavati, which Nithyashree tackled.
Nithyashree sings to a high sruti and is able to scale very high octave; but then it ends up like a shriek. Perhaps she should try to avoid such attempts to make listening more interesting.
The chosen song was Tyagaraja’s ‘Evaruchira Rama.’ The kalpanaswara was innovative with tisram at the end of every cycle of the tala. Here, the violinist seemed to encounter some difficulty as there was often a small gap before he picked up the sahitya at the end of the swara spell.
At this point came the thani by I. Sivakumar on the mridangam and Sivaramakrishnan on the ghatam. Till the Kharaharapriya piece somehow the percussion did not seem to jell with the vocal. In fact, her music that evening was very appealing when she sang without the percussion.
‘Bagyadalakshmi Baramma’ was sung in Bowli instead of Madhyamavati which has been the general practice.
The ragamalika viruttam ‘Petrathaithanai Maga Maranthalum’ with Neelambari, Dhanyasi, Hamsanandi and Revathi came with emotional fervour and it was followed by ‘Kapali’ in Revathi. The final piece was a tillana in Dwijavanti. During the concert Nityashree also rendered ‘Ranganathude’ in Sowrahstram, ‘Madhura Madhura’ in Atana and ‘Vachamagocharame’ in Kaikavasi.
Mohan Santhanam.
In spite of the poor crowd at the beginning, Mohan Santhanam sang with unflagging energy. After the Ata tala varnam in Kalyani, Mohan took up ‘Sobillu Sapthaswara’ followed by racy and imaginative swarakalpana.
The Reetigolwa kriti ‘Enna Punniyam’ was well emoted. His alapana of Khambodi had some classical prayogams. The alapana was particularly attractive at mandrasthayi. But somehow the way the elaboration was conceived did not suit the selected song, ‘Sri Raghuvara’ of Tyagaraja.
The kalpanaswara for the pallavi was followed by a short and fast thani by Mannargudi Subramaniam on the mridangam and C.S.Venkataramanan on the kanjira together.
The main piece was a Ragam, Tanam, Pallavi in Thodi set to kandajathi triputa tala with the little finger as the samam. The alapana, sung in two segments, was commendable.
The violinist, N.C.Madhav, not a well-known figure in the circuit, was impressive throughout with commendable azhuttham.
The swaras were in Ragamalika with Neelambari, Hamsanandi and Sivaranjani. The violinist tended to play longer than the main artist in this segment though his ideas were appealing. There was again a brief thani by the two percussionists together. The tillana in Ragesri was the concluding piece.
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Music Season
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