The most attractive part of Amrutha Sankaranarayanan’s concert was her delineation of the raga and the tanam of Suddhasaranga for RTP. Rahul on the violin too was quite good.
The pallavi was set to tisra triputa tala and in the swara segment ragas Chandrakauns and Jog were very pleasant. She reminds one of her father T.V. Sankaranarayanan both in the (non) modulation of voice, enunciation of lyrics and the body language.
Before RTP came the alapana of Bhairavi as a precursor to ‘Thanayunibrova.’ The niraval of ‘Vatsamuvenda’ was quite good and the swaras too had some interesting suites. The thani at this point by B. Sivaraman on the mridangam and Tiruchi Krishnaswamy on the ghatam was brilliant. There were a few rarely heard kritis in the recital such as ‘Shyamasundaranga’ in Dhanyasi, ‘Sri Ramam’ in Narayanagowla and ‘Deiveegasthalam’ in Purvikalyani.
The raga essay of Dhanyasi and the swaras were fairly good. The alapana of Narayanagowla was handled effectively and carefully without straying into Kedaragowla. While the Tamil lyrics of ‘Deiveegasthalam’ itself was quite interesting, the interpretation of Purvikalyani had some appealing ideas. But why couldn’t she sing it a little slower to bring out the beauty of the raga? The niraval of ‘Thuyyave..’ was fairly good. Rahul’s versions in all the ragas were quite commendable.
While the concert began with ‘Karunai Seyvai’ in Hamsadhwani, followed by a Thiruppavai ‘Pullinvai’ in Atana, it concluded with a Thiruppugazh in Hamsanandi.
