The Vishnu Sahasranama Satsangam, R.K. Puram, of late, has been including full-fledged Carnatic music concerts of youngsters in their religious programmes. Recently, the Satsangam organised a vocal concert of the Chennai-based Nisha Rajagopalan as part of the one-day deepa puja and Lalitha Sahasranama parayanam. Nisha, justifying fully the organisation’s choice of young talents, revealed the depth of heir musical talents and delighted the devotees and music lovers with some well-presented songs.
The very first presentation, an Adi tala varnam in raga Kedaragowla, which Nisha presented in two speeds with a riveting kalaparamanam (tempo), was indicative that many more delightful songs would be coming up. Nisha lived up to expectations.
While presenting Tyagaraja’s “Rama nine” in raga Huseni, Nisha brought out the emotive contents of the lyrics. From then onwards emphasis was on the improvisation techniques. All the songs in her main session were preceded by raga alapana or viruttam.
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Nisha’s creative talents came to the fore when she presented a fine delineation of ragas Bhairavi (for Tyagaraja’s “Upacharamulanu”, which was the main item of the recital), Saveri (for Shyama Sastri’s “Durusuga”), Hamsanadam (for Tyagaraja’s “Bantu riti”) and also while handling the other improvisation techniques, like neraval (for the main item) and swaraprastaras.
Delhi’s VSK Chakrapani on the violin, K.N. Padmanabhan on the mridangam and K. Ramamurthy on the ghatam provided excellent and supportive accompaniment. Chakrapani’s sketches of Hamsanadam, Saveri and Bhairavi were enjoyable. So was the tani avartanam (percussion solo) which percussionists Padmanabhan and Ramamurthy played in Adi tala.
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In another event, to mark the birth centenary celebrations of the legendary late Madurai Mani Iyer, Shanmukhananda Sangeetha Sabha in association with the Delhi Tamil Sangam organised a concert of T.V. Sankaranarayanan, nephew and disciple of Mani Iyer. Sankaranarayanan, keeping in view the specific purpose of the concert, thoughtfully rendered songs that were sung and popularised by Mani Iyer. Kavimani Desika Vinayagam Pillai’s “Inda paramugam” in raga Poorvikalyani, Ootukadu Venkata Kavi’s “Thaye Yashoda” in Todi and Periyasami Tooran’s “Puniyam oru kodi” in Keeravani, Gopalakrishna Bharati’s “Yeppa varuvaro” in raga Jaunpuri and the “Western Note” that formed part of his recital brought nostalgic memories to old-timers.
Sankaranarayanan started his concert with Papanasam Sivan’s “Tatvamariya Tarama” in raga Reetigowla, which was preceded by a shloka on Lord Ganesha in the form of a scintillating viruttam. Tyagaraja’s “Entavedukondu” in raga Saraswati Manohari too came in for elaborate treatment with neraval and swaraprastaras. As expected, his miscellaneous session contained ragamalika viruttams.
Sankaranarayanan’s son and disciple Mahadevan Sankaranarayanan provided good vocal support. Delhi P. Sundararajan on the violin, Umayalapuram Mali on the mridangam and Alathur Rajaganesh on the kanjira too provided good support to the veteran. While Sundararajan played a good alapana of ragas Todi and Keeravani, Mali and Rajaganesh played a riveting tani avartanam in Adi tala.