When the singer’s accent and focus are the melodious and lyrical aspects of the ragas and kritis, it enhances the concert’s quality . Nisha Rajagopal had accordingly chosen ragas and compositions for exhaustive treatment .
Nisha’s first treatise — Ranjani — was well-embellishedwith sancharas. The kriti was GNB’s ‘Ranjani niranjani.’ The niraval and swaras for ‘Kanjadala lochani’ carried interesting combinations and reasonable amount of swaras.
The highlight of the concert was a detailed essay of Bhairavi and for this, Nisha selected Arunachalakavi’s ‘Yaro ivar yaro’. The in-depth exposition at ‘Chandrabimba mukha’ brought out the raga’s beauty . The swara exchanges between her and violinist Ranjani Ramakrishna were enjoyable.
Nisha included ragas such as Sarasangi (the opening ‘Jaya jaya padmanabha’ by Swati Tirunal), Atana (‘Anupama gunambudi’ by Tyagaraja), Nattakurinji (Gopalakrishna Bharati’s ‘Vazhi maraithirukkudhe’), Kannada (Tyagaraja’s ‘Ninnade nele’) and concluded her recital with two popular numbers — ‘Nanati brathuku’ in Revati by Annamacharya and ‘Baro krishnayya’ in Ragamalika by Kanakadasa.
Ranjani Ramakrishna on the violin was a bit passive but her responses to the raga essays and swarakalpanas were good. The two youngsters N.C. Bharadwaj (mridangam) and Anirudh Athreya (ganjira) were lively — not only their percussion support but also their tani avartanam was energetic and exhilarating.
