Winning over with violin...

Anupriya Deotale showcased her command over melody and rhythm in her solo recital in New Delhi

DEDICATED TO MUSIC Anupriya Deotale in performance

Anupriya Deotale, the violinist daughter of Hindi poet Chandrakant Deotale and a graded artiste of All India Radio and Doordarshan, conceived and presented “Music Beyond Words”, an evening of her solo violin recital. It was followed by fusion music with selected Hindi poems of her father under the aegis of Anupriya Violin Akademi in association with the Sahitya Kala Parishad and Department of Art and Language at the India Habitat Centre recently.

Vani Prakashan released two books of poet Chandrakant Deotale on this occasion. As far as the name given to the musical evening, one wondered whether “Music beyond words” could apply to any kind of instrumental music. So the violin solo by Anupriya Deotale was like any other concert of instrumental music. It was the second half of the evening that made the title meaningful when the music following the recited poem went beyond words to interpret the meaning and the intellectual and emotional content of the poetry.

Anupriya, accompanied on tabla by Zuheb Ahmad Khan, opened her classical violin recital with the melodious evening raga Jhinjhoti. She attracted music lovers with the tonal quality of her tuneful violin from the very first ‘swar-lagav’ of the raga. The succinct introductory aalap was followed by a slow composition set to Jhap tala of ten beats cycle. Anupriya’s leisurely elaboration of the raga with gradual progression of the notes during the aalap-barhat explored the raga imaginatively but the tempo of the tabla kept wavering towards slower pace time and again which made her tempo also unstable. The situation improved during the next composition set to the usual Teentala, where Zuheb felt comfortable and confidant enough to get applause in his solo rounds. Anupriya exhibited good command over both melody and rhythm but she could have easily avoided to shoot the ‘Ati Taar Shadja’ which was blatantly missed.

The violin recital concluded with the jet speed jhala, which also had the Khand Jati Chhand of five (12-123) perfectly fitted into the four count sections of Teen Tala.

The second half of the evening looked like a one man show by Jivesh who had imaginatively conceived, composed, arranged the music and fabricated it into the poems of Chandrakant Deotale recited by him with dramatic power and feel. He also played the guitar for added effects to the fusion band that comprised violin by Anupriya, tabla by Zuheb, keyboards by Nilotpal Sinha and percussions by Fakruddin Ghaffari. The pathos of Puria Dhanashri paved the path of the first poem where the poets remembers his mother with great intensity and admits he can write poem on any subject on earth but not on his mother.

Poetry recitation

Anupriya interpreted the bhava of each and every poem flawlessly with great feel and impact. The impressive recitation of the poetry by Jivesh helped the audience relate to the music in a positive way, but one felt he should have given pause in between the music to demarcate one poem from the other. The evening concluded with Sant Tukaram Pada translated in Hindi by Chandrakant Deotale tuned to the melodious strains of raga Hamsadhwani which converted into a fast tempo composition in the same raga joined by the entire band culminating into a crescendo.