Maestro GNB’s style of music is being propagated by a host of artists, who use their creativity to give it a fresh look. T. Eswaran Bhattathiri, a protégé of Trichur V Ramachandran presented a vocal concert packed with an interesting mosaic of compositions to mark the celebrations of the legendary composer Papanasam Sivan under the auspices of The Indian Fine Arts Society.
Eswaran’s voice carries a delectable timbre, which helped in highlighting the facets of the compositions. He needs to be commended for his choice of kritis as most of them are not frequently heard on concert platforms. The warming up numbers, ‘Thuthikayanai Nee Thuthi’ in Mohanam, ‘Thiruvarul Thara’ in Atana, ‘Esane Indha Ezhaikkranga’ in Chakravaham, sounded fresh. But, should each one carry an attaché of swara package?
Eswaran exploited his creativity by taking up Begada, Ritigowla, Sahana and Kambodi for expositions. While Sahana and Khambodi were expanded, Begada and Ritigowla were superficial exercises. The Begada alapana was for ‘Gana Rasamudan’ and Ritigowla was followed by ‘Un Padam Nambina’. ‘Chittam Irangatha’ came with Sahana and the beauteous ‘Kadirkamak Kandan’ was chosen for Khambodi.
Bhattathiri through his diligence could demonstrate a perfect grasp of the raga in his presentations. The glitch arises only in his approach; like his abrupt termination of swaras or a rapid rounding up of the raga essay. The swara exercises and raga essays at times seemed desultory. The brief précis of Ritigowla and the extensive treatise of Sahana could have been punctuated with succulent phrases of the raga emphasising their melody exclusive to these ragas. Khambodi, however, was an exception with the vocalist determined to showcase the upper register sancharas to portray the regal raga. The output in such cases cannot be faltered and the kriti projection matched in quality. His computation on ‘Nee Engirunthalum’ with swara package carried lot of verve.
M.R. Gopinath on the violin elicited the best phrases of the ragas and swaras with his long standing experience. Madipakkam Suresh and H. Sivaramakrishnan on the mridangam and the ghatam were electrifying in their percussion support right from the start; so was their thani avartanam.
