It was rather sad to see such a talented and knowledgeable musician struggling with his voice. Neyveli Santhanagopalan had problems with a sore throat right from the beginning. After the Navaragamalika varnam, when he took up ‘Sri Mahaganapthi' in Gowla, he began coughing and a lady from the audience came to his rescue with some tablet. He did an interesting tala manipulation in the Madhyamakala sollu-swara combination of the kriti. In the Swarakalpana Delhi Sundararajan was better than the main artist, in fact it was his musical skill which went a long way in making the concert worth sitting through in addition to Santhanagopalan's innate talent.
The raga alapana of Purvikalyani was decent by both the vocalist and violinist followed by Tyagaraja's ‘Gnanamosakaradha.' The niraval and swarams for ‘Paramathmudu Jevathmudu' was quite lively. Tiruchi Sankaran on the mridangam and Dr. Suresh on the ghatam gave spirited accompaniment. In fact one wondered who the main artists were that evening. Without going to the top octave much to overcome the throat problem, Santhanagopalan rendered a very detailed and appealing Thodi raga alapana with Sundararajan matching his effort. Syama Sastri's ‘Ninne Nammi Naanu' was taken up for niraval in ‘Kamakshi Kanchadalayadakshi.' The swarams were made interesting through intricate tala calculations, with the percussionists contributing their might to it. The thani which followed was like ‘Sabash! Sariyana Potti' between Sankaran and Suresh. Earlier there were ‘Nenendu' in Harikhambodi, ‘Mokshamugalada' in Saramati and ‘Naadupai' in Madhyamavati.
When the audience expected the concert to end with Thodi, there came RTP in Yadukulakhambodi set to Kandajati Triputa tala. The elaboration of the raga was sung in three segments bringing out the Kaarunya rasa of the raga and the violinist was better even than the vocalist.
