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Music Season
INDIAN FINE ARS SOCIETY
Manodharma in display
M. RAMESH
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With an approach that bordered on the aggressive, Neyveli Santhanagopalan unleashed his imagination to the audience’s delight.
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Neyveli Santhanagopalan
The impossible traffic jam at T. Nagar that caused Neyveli Santhanagopalan arrive late was perhaps fortuitous from the rasikas’ standpoint. It put the vocalist in an angry and aggressive mood and filled in him a resolve to make up for the embarrassment by giving his very best to the audience. The result was high-quality music.
Except for the Varamu piece, the entire concert was like witnessing a firing machine-gun. After a warm-up varnam (Sri), Santhanagopalan took up Tyagaraja’s ‘Rama ni pai’ in Kedaram, which was tailed by a burst of aggressive swaras. The swaras, while not being too repetitive of the defining sequences of sa-ma-ga-ma and sa-ni-pa-ma much, captured the beauty of the raga fully — an evidence of the artiste’s rich manodharma.
A rasika demanded Varamu. This raga substitutes the upper ‘da’ for the lower in Hindolam and has hues of Bageshri. The lilting alapana was followed by Papanasam Sivan’s ‘Thunai Purindarul,’ and, as if to gratify the rasika with his largesse, Santhanagopalan proceeded to present a niraval on the lines ’Pathita paavana’.
Swaras that followed were racy and aggressive, but a few cycles contained asymmetrical beats (odukkal), which militated against the leisurely mood of the raga. Indeed, this was the only blemish on an otherwise superb concert.
The main piece was Tyagaraja’s ‘Dorakuna Ituvanti Seva’ in Bilahari, with niraval and swaras at ‘Ramabrahma tanayudu.’ This was followed by a whip-crack kiravani RTP, where the tanam had some very innovative phrases anchored on ‘ni’. Surprisingly, the tanam broke into a ragamalika mode and tore through the five pancharatna ragas. A pallavi set to kanta jati triputa talam was taken up but hastily rushed through. In the swaras that followed, the artist rode into Hamsanandi, Ahiri and Kadanakuthukalam. In the Hamsanandi episode, the ‘ri’ appeared well towards the end, keeping alive till then a debate whether it was Hamsanandi or Sunadavinodini.
Smiling practically throughout the concert, violinist Charulatha Ramanujam returned line everything that Santhanagopalan threw at her, with the sole exception of Kadanakuthuhalam. Her essays of Varamu, Bilahari and Kiravani matched the Santhanagopalan’s in brilliance, which earned her frequent ‘sabash’ from the vocalist. Mridangist K.V.Prasad was typically gentle in his strokes, which also closely fit in with the vocal music. Bangalore Amrit was on the Kanjira. This young man has fingers made for speed. He played well, though in the tani, he had some difficulty in keeping in with Prasad’s korvai.
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Music Season
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