Recently, the All India Radio, in its National programme of music, broadcasted a violin duet concert by Mysore M. Nagaraj and Mysore M. Manjunath. In their recital of about one and half hours, the brothers delighted listeners with their brilliant performance. Nagaraj and Manjunath began with Tyagaraja’s “Rara mayintidaka” in raga Asaveri before embarking on to a somewhat detailed rendition of Patnam Subramanya Iyer’s “Marivere” in raga Latangi. A fine alapana preceded the song rendition and the brothers completed the item with kalpanaswaras laced with rich creativity.
Nagaraj and Manjunath introduced a ragam-taanam-pallavi. The pallavi composed in raga Khambhoji and set to Adi tala was presented in a delightful manner. This was preceded by a fine delineation of the raga and soothing taanam. The brothers concluded the session with ragamalika swaraprastharas. K.U. Jaichandra Rao on the mridangam and N. Amrit on the Kanjira provided able support. Their tani avartanam in Adi tala was riveting.
Sunday concertThe hour-long Sunday noon concert broadcast from the Delhi station of AIR is another programme looked forward by music enthusiasts. This past Sunday, the concert recordings of late M.S. Subbulakshmi were broadcast. However, the joy of music lovers was short lived as these recordings were cut short to a mere half an hour to pave way for a film music based programme. As there is no dearth of film songs based programmes in radio, the cut in the time slot for Carnatic music seemed unwarranted.
Tyagaraja FestivalThe two-day Purandaradasa Tyagaraja Music festival, organised jointly by the Ramakrishnapuram South Indian Society and the India International Centre in New Delhi featuring upcoming artistes, turned out to be a rewarding experience for music lovers.
Aishwarya Shankar who sang for about two hours on the second day of the festival too delighted the audience. She started her concert impressively with Purandaradasar’s “Sharanu Siddhi Vinayaka” in raga Sowrashtram. Her next item, Tyagaraja’s “Isa pahimam” in raga Kalyani, contained kalpanaswaras that were indicative of her talents in creative music. Aishwarya then took up Tyagaraja’s “Ma janaki” in Khambhoji for a detailed rendition. While the raga alapana was scintillating, in which she brought out its nuances to the fore, the neraval of the phrase, “Raja raja vara rajeevaksha vinu”, and the subsequent kalpanaswaras flowed with rich creativity.
Aishwarya’s central item too was ragam-taanam-pallavi. She presented the pallavi, “Tyagarajare umakku enai yavare sree rama priyane”, in raga Karaharapriya and set to khanda jathi thriputa tala to the delight of the audience. Earlier, she sang a detailed raga alapana in an unhurried manner. The ragamalika swaras were in Karaharapriya, Ramapriya and Kokilapriya ragas, both in forward and reverse directions, albeit it was not quite a smooth affair in the reverse direction.
Delhi R. Sridhar on the violin and Kumbakonam N. Padmanabhan on the mridangam provided able support. Sridhar’s take of the ragas Khambhoji and Karaharapriya and the tani avartanam of Padmanabhan in Khanda jathi thriputa tala were enjoyable.
