As part of All India Radio’s (AIR) national fete ‘Akashvani Sangeet Sammelan 2012’, three performances of one-hour duration each were held in Thrissur.
The fete began with a veena recital by S. Srinivasan . An A top-grade artiste of AIR Chennai, Srinivasan is a post-graduate in music. He has also undergone training in vocal music under B. Rajam Iyer and Calcutta Krishnamurthy.
Srinivasan’s selections for the recital were the choicest – ‘Vallabha nayaka’ (Dikshitar, Begada and Roopaka tala), ‘Baale baale subhooshini’ (Tyagaraja, Ritigowla and Adi), ‘Mamava karunaya manu kulalalaama’ (Swati, Shanmughapriya and Misra chapu) and Tillana (Lalgudi Jayaraman, Vrindavani).
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The restriction regarding the duration of the concert seemed counterproductive to his performance in total. Still the artiste did justice to the essaying of Reetigowla. But the tanam that followed left much to be desired, even though the feat of tanam owes its origin to the veena. Also, he stuck to the composition instead of going to the pallavi after this part. Nellai A. Balaji on the mridangam and G. Chandrasekhara Sarma on the ghatam provided percussion support.
Next was an inspiring vocal concert by R.A. Ramamani. The artiste opened with ‘Mahadadi’, a Purandara Dasa composition in Natta and Khanda chapu. Interestingly, the number served to highlight her creative instincts as well as her alluring voice. She chose the rarely sung raga Mandari next; a raga that’s a janya of Panthuvarali. The rendering of ‘Ninnu jappa karanamemi’, a composition by Patnam Subramania Iyer in Adi, was full of verve. Her elaboration of Janaranjini that followed was short but scholarly. The composition was ‘Nadadina madanedu’ of Tyagaraja in Misra chapu. The swaraprasthara in this was remarkable and repetition of panchamam towards the end of each phrase made it more colourful.
Ramamani sang Thodi as the main raga. The elaboration of the raga was vivacious as she could unfold delectable shades of the raga in all its variety. She scaled the upper octave quite effortlessly and her voice appeared more attractive and steady. B. Raghuram’s reproduction of the raga on the violin was in the right proportion. The composition was ‘Dachu kovalena Dasaradhi’ in Misra jhampa of 10 beats. The niravel at ‘Saoumitri Thyagarajuni’ was laudable. Rajesh Srinivasan on the mridangam and Ranganath Chakravarthy on the ghatam supported the vocalist effectively. They took care not to overdo the tani as well. Ramamani concluded the concert with ‘Siva Siva bhava bhava’ of Narayana Thirthar in Sindhubhairavi and Adi.
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The third part of the programme was an ecstatic ‘Tala vadya’ kutcheri led by Denkinikottai V. Mani on the thavil and accompanied by Madippakkam A. Murali on the ghatam. Their performance anchored on Misra chap with ‘eduppu’ in samam.