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Music Season
NARADA GANA SABHA
A new concert-experience
S. SIVAKUMAR
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TVG’s extensive research on voice culture surfaced unobtrusively.
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Photo: S.R. Raghunathan
T.V. Gopalakrishnan
T.V. Goplakrishnan, a member of the old order, seems to look at life in just the same manner as he must have done when he cast his debut. He catches you with his enthusiasm, appreciates with a clear conscience the virtuosity of his accompanists, is innocent enough to ask himself loudly the reasons for the exodus of the audience during the concert — and thus creates a new kind of concert-experience. The varnam in Saveri itself was sung to indicate his imaginative pote
ntial and even at this stage the layam team, Srimushnam Raja Rao (mridangam) and V. Suresh (ghatam), showed that their strategy and style would be — Allow the performance to attain its very best. The Ganapati stuti that followed was ‘Vandisu’ in Nattai (Purandaradasa).
That S. Varadarajan, his own disciple (one can recall how TVG once quietly complimented Varadarajan for his laya vidwat) was on the violin was an advantage that set itself to the purpose of burnishing the concert. The violinist’s izhaippus at many places gladdened his master and the stay-we-must audience. TVG always has his experimental hat on and his extensive research on voice culture surfaced unobtrusively in the concert in the aesthetic use of the ma and dha during his alapana for Varamu (‘Manasuloni Marmamulu’). Artha bhavam soared as he rendered the syllable as ‘Manasuloni Marmamulu Thelusuko’ in full and not as the sliced and unpalatable ‘Manasuloni Mar / Mamuluthelusuko’. The song itself acquired a deliberate kalapramanam that tended to make you turn inward and search within, as suggested by Tyagaraja. ‘Hiranmayim’ (Lalitha-Dikshitar) was begun at the anupallavi – ‘Sirathara Sampath Pradham’ — the alapana closing at the upper shadjam and the raga phraseology virtually suggesting the kriti and its grandeur. ‘Parvathi Ninnu’ (Kalkada-Syama Sastri) revealed his assimilated patanthara for this song.
The main piece was Kharaharapriya (‘Samanamevaru’-Tyagaraja) with niraval at ‘Paluku Paluku’ and swaras again at ‘Rama Nee Samanamevaru’. One of the pet kritis of Chembai, ‘Samagana Vinodhini’ (Hamsanandhi - Lalithadasar), ‘Thyagaraja Gurum Asraye’ (Kedaram-MDR), and two Dasar padams (‘Thalabeku’ in Brindavana Saranga and ‘Thamburi Meetithava’ in Sindhubhairavi) were his other inclusions.
The two artistes on the layam gave a thani of rhythmic patterns in as cooperative a manner as any typical thani could be conceived of.
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Music Season
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