Prema Rangarajan needs to be lauded for staying off-the-beaten track. Whether it was a conscious choice or by happenstance, the remarkable feature of the concert was that at least one aspect was rare — raga, composition or tala.
The concert, for this sabha, is likely to be remembered for the pallavi set to an extremely complex tala called Ragavardhanam, one that is not unheard of, but rare. It is a 19-beat tala, and despite Prema’s best efforts at demonstrating it, it remained as confusing as fascinating. The tala stole the limelight from the pallavi , with the audience focussing on the tala rather than on the Kiravani pallavi (’Kamakshi Kamakoti’). It is a testimony to the musicologist-vocalist’s grip on laya that she did all the tala exercises effortlessly, dividing the pallavi line in groups of three, five and seven. That the accompanists Pakkala Ramadas (violin), Nellai Balaji (mridangam) and D.V. Venkata Subramaniam (ghatam) cottoned on to the tala with apparent ease, displaying their command over their art.
It was apparent to even a casual attendee that Prema believes in variety. She presented a neat Mandari, a derivative of Pantuvarali, in which she chose Harikesanallur Muthaiah Bhagavatar’s ‘Ennalu Tirugu.’ Niraval and swaras were at ‘Pannagabharana Siva Bala Subramanya.’ Continuing with her penchant for the uncommon, she selected Dikshitar’s Kedaragowlai composition, ‘Abhayamba Nayaka.’ A quick Begada filler was another rare one — the kriti, Tyagaraja’s ‘Samiki Sari.’ The main piece was in Kalyani and the song selected was the not-often-heard Syama Sastri’s ‘Raave Parvataraja Kumari’ set to the 10-beat Jhampa tala.
The concert was a mosaic studded with rare gems. However, on the flip side, the alapanas of Kalyani and Kiravani sounded rather run-off-the-mill.
The presentation would have been better had Prema taken extra efforts to make the kritis more audible.
