Banyan Tree’s Dakshinayan Carnatic music concerts are looked forward to by the Capital’s music lovers every year as it brings popular artistes from south India. This year too Chennai-based flute artiste Shashank Subramanyam and vocalist Bombay Jayashri were featured in the festival which was held recently at the Kamani Auditorium.
Jayashri started her recital with a composition of Patnam Subramanya Aiyyar “Paridanamiccite” in the raga Bilahari. Jayashri prefixed the song with a brief raga alapana and suffixed it with swarakalpanas. She then embarked to the ragam-tanam-pallavi session and presented the pallavi “Va Guha Muruga Shanmugane unadu padame thunai” in the raga Shanmukhapriya and set to Adi tala. Earlier, in a scintillating delineation of the raga, she brought out its features to the fore. The subsequent tanam rendition was delightful. The ragamalika swarakalpanas in the ragas Kalyani, Ananda Bhairavi and Vasantha, besides in Shanmukhapriya added lustre to the session.
Jayashri brought out the emotive contents of the lyrics while singing Gopalakrishna Bharathi’s “Irrakam varamal” in the raga Behag. After singing the poplar Annamacharya’s “Bhavayami Gopalabalam” in the raga Yamuna Kalyani, Jayashri concluded her concert as expected, with a thillana composed by her guru late Lalgudi G. Jayaraman, in the raga Desh.
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Mysore Srikanth on the violin, J. Vaidhyanathan on the mridangam and K.V. Gopalakrishnan on the kanjira provided appropriate support to Jayashree. Srikanth’s take of Shanmukhapriya was a delightful experience. So was the percussionists’ riveting tani avartanam in Adi tala.
Shashank began his flute recital with Tyagaraja’s “Eavarura ninnuvina” in the raga Mohanam. The pallavi that Shashank took up was in the raga Dharmavati and set to Adi tala. This being an instrumental concert, Shashank could have announced the lyrics of the pallavi for a better appreciation of the piece. Shashank introduced ragamalika pattern of swarakalpanas towards the end.
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His concluding piece was the popular “Krishna ni begane baro” in the raga Yaman Kalyani. J. Vaidhyanathan on the mridangam and K.V. Gopalakrishnan on the kanjira provided the percussion support.