The Shanmukhananda Sangeetha Sabha, in association with the Andhra Pradesh Bhavan, organised its annual Tyagaraja Music and Dance Festival last week in the AP Bhavan auditorium. Spread over four days, the festival featured four music concerts and one Bharatanatyam performance.
The festival featured popular Carnatic vocalists from Hyderabad, Vishakhapatnam, Vijayawada and Chennai. From youngsters to senior artistes, all did adequate justice to the theme of the festival by singing predominantly Tyagaraja compositions.
As Telugu is the mother tongue of many of the singers, it was a special joy for Delhi’s music lovers to hear them render the Telugu kritis of Tyagaraja. The spirits of the performers were further kindled by the responsive audience, who enjoyed every bit of the recitals. Malladi Sriram Prasad and Malladi Ravi Kumar , popularly known as the Malladi Brothers, enthralled listeners on the second day for close to three hours. They began delightfully with an Adi tala varnam in raga Asaveri. which they neatly sang in two speeds. The brothers then embarked on Tyagaraja’s “Bhakti Bichchamiyave" in raga Shankarabharanam, introducing kalpanaswaras towards the end of the song. The finishing korvai spoke highly of the creative talents of the siblings.
“Munduvenuga” in raga Durbar and “Makelara” in Ravichandrika (both Tyagaraja compositions) were handled well. They took up Annamacharya’s “Gummanai yedisruti” in raga Poorvikalyani (set to tune by their guru, the late Nedunuri Krishnamoorthy) and Tyagaraja’s “Enati nomu” in raga Bhairavi for detailed presentation. While it was the younger Ravi Kumar who presented a scintillating alapana of Poorvikalyani , the elder brother Sriram Prasad, along with Ravi Kumar, sang a fine alapana of Bhairavi.
In “Gummanai yedisruti” they sang neraval of the phrase “vedanilayudani bakthajanabuni padero”, while in “Enati nomu” they took up the phrase “Sundar-esha suguna brinda dasharatha nandana aravinda nayana pavana” for nereval inter-pretation.
They also sang kalpana swaras. They regaled listeners with their creative depth in these renditions.
The brothers then moved to the central item of their recital which was a ragam-taanam-pallavi. The smooth execution of the pallavi “Jagannayaki sahasrakoti Yugadharini yogananda pradayini pahi” in raga Bahudari, set to a slightly complicated khanda jati Triputa tala in khanda nadai, ragamalika swaras in Bahudari, Saveri, Kalyanavasantam, Valaji and Suruti both in forward and reverse order, were enthralling. The scintillating delineation of the raga and the soothing taanam by both the brothers in turn were other noteworthy features.
MSN Murthy on the violin, K.V. Prasad on the mridangam and Nerkunam Shankar on the kanjira provided excellent support. While Murthy played a fine delineation of ragas Poorvikalyani, Bhairavi and Bahudari, the percussionists played a riveting tani avartanam in Adi tala.
Youngster Rithvik Raja , who sang on the third day for about two hours, was very impressive. He too delighted music lovers with some well presented Tyagaraja compositions.
“Rama ni samana” in raga Kharaharapriya and “Meru Samana” in Mayamalavagoula were songs that Rithvik took up for detailed exploration. Vittal Ramamurthy on the violin and K.V. Prasad on the mridangam were excellent.
