It was only appropriate that S.Mahathi made sure that her concert had the flavour of the late M. Balamuralikrishna, singing ragas associated with him, and the song that was synonymous with his name , ‘Nagumomu’. After all, Mahathi’s father, Thiruvaiyaru Sekhar, was a disciple and she also became interested in Carnatic music, inspired by Balamurali’s music.
So, after an enjoyable Varali (Dikshitar’s ‘Seshachala Nayakam’), Mahathi took up Mahati, the raga that bears the BMK hallmark, and it was the same raga, as was pointed out, upon which the popular Tamil film song ‘Adisaya Ragam Ananda Ragam’ was based. As expected, the composition ‘Mahaniya Madhuramoorthe’ was by the maestro, and Mahathi did complete justice to it.
Then came another BMK raga, Sarvasri, which has only three notes — sa, ma and pa. Perhaps, which is why, it sounds like a Western waltz, and the brisk ‘Uma Sutam Namami’, again of Balamurali, came as a good contrast to the previous deep and slow Mahati.
The Abheri alapana was nice, but left one feeling that it could have been sharper and better, and in due course, Tyagaraja’s ‘Nagumomu’ followed. Mahathi more than made up for the moderate alapana with some fiery swaras, which were at the conventional , ‘Jagamela Paramatma.’
Vittal Rangan (violin) played well, especially the Abheri. Rohan Krishnamurthy (mridangam) and Alathur Rajganesh (ganjira) provided adequate percussive support and played a short and sweet thani, after which Mahathi sang a moving Jayadeva Ashtapadi and ended the concert with a tillana in Behag.
