Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer Golden Jubilee Foundation honoured vocalist Amritha Murali on V. Subrahmaniam’s memorial day, held at Ragasudha Hall, Luz, Mylapore. Senior vocalist and contemporary of V. Subrahmaniam, P.S. Narayanaswamy, and Cleveland V.V. Sundaram recalled their bonhomie and the proficiency of the late vocalist, a prominent disciple of Semmangudi.
Amritha Murali in the recent times is computing more value to her music. She scaled significant heights to traverse in all the three domains: mandra, madyama and tara sthayis, with commendable ease.
Her deposition to this came at the start itself with Syama Sastri’s oeuvre ‘Rave Himagiri,’ the Thodi swarajati. The deep down swaras and sahityas on the lower octaves and the sharp etched upper ranges were vigilantly rendered without sacrificing piety and clarity. Amritha’s main raga Kharaharapriya was, indeed, a brilliant exercise. The raga treatise was mostly banked on the lingering phrases, rich in bhava, at every level with open-throated articulation underscoring the beauty of Kharaharapriya. Tyagaraja’s popular ‘Pakkala Nilabadi’ and the niraval on ‘Manasuna Tala’ had gone on professionally graceful paths.
Amritha’s earlier part of the concert resided on Begada and Kalyani. Brevity was predominant in Begada essay with ‘Lokavana Chathura’ (Tyagaraja) as her choice. She unleashed a surge of creative sangatis on the niraval and deluge of swaras on ‘Saketadhipa Sarasa.’ She repeated the same in ‘Rama Nee Vadu’ (Tyagaraja) in Kalyani with interesting weaves of swarakalpana revolving on shadjam on the charanam line. A slow and rare ‘Sriramama Ravikulabdi’ in Narayana Gowla (Muthuswami Dikshitar) and common and zesty ‘Nenarunchi Nanu’ in Malavi (Tyagaraja) were other inclusions.
R. Hemalatha on the violin presented a picture of perfect accompanist to Amritha’s creativity in ragas and swaras not overstepping at any point. All the three ragas were noteworthy with her original touch in her versions. However, B. Ganapathiraman (mridangam) and N. Guruprasad (ghatam) were exuberant in every stage of the song adding interesting packages of percussion beats which were enjoyable too.
