Month: March 2016
Siblings on song
It was a double delight for lovers of Carnatic music in New Delhi this past week.
At a time when Carnatic instrumental concerts in traditional formats are rare events in the Capital, it was heartening to see two different organisations hosting duet violin concerts of two pairs of siblings on successive days recently.
While Sunaad featured the siblings Mysore M. Nagaraj and Dr. M. Manjunath on the second day of their festival titled “Sangamam 2016”, the big ticket music sabha, the Shanmukhananda Sangeetha Sabha in association with Team Telugu Bhawan featured Dr. M. Lalitha and M. Nandhini on the first day of its Tyagaraja Music and Dance Festival.
While the former festival was spread across three days, the latter was a four day affair. Both the siblings through years of hard work and experience in the field, which became evident no sooner they started playing, presented a delectable renderings. The brothers in their concert of about two hours presented five items in all, including a ragam-tanam-pallavi.
While packing as many as nine items in their concert of around the same time, the sisters struck to the festival’s theme and made it an “all Tyagaraja compositions concert”. While Nagaraj-Munjunath duo started their concert with a slow tempo composition of Muthuswami Dikshidar, “Akilandeswari” in raga Dwijawanti in a riveting tempo, Lalitha-Nandhini duo started with a sparkling Tyagaraja’s “Raghunayaka” in raga Hamsadhwani. Both the siblings introduced creative swara formats for the opening piece itself, bringing to fore their depth in creativity at the very outset.
While the brothers took up Tyagaraja’s “Manasu nilpa” in raga Abhogi for detailed rendition before embarking on the central item, the sisters took up “Nadupai” in raga Madhyamavathi and “Varanarada” in Vijayasri. The ragam-tanam-pallavi of Nagaraj-Manjunath duo was in raga Shanmukhapriya and the pallavi “Sankari vasankari sivasankari sakalaloka janani” was composed in adi tala. The siblings together delineated the ragas – Shanmukhapriya here in this session and Abhogi earlier – in turns. The fast passages, particularly using notes in higher octave, though brought out the mastery of the duo in handling the instrument. One felt that they were traversing to the “point of no return” region.
The duo earlier recited Muthuswami Dikshidar’s “Srivaralakshmi” in Sriragam in an enchanting manner. In the case of Lalitha-Nandhini duo, each sibling took up a raga for delineation (Lalitha the Madhyamavathi raga and Nandhini the Vijayasri raga).
Earlier, the duo played the first pancharatna kriti “Jagadanandakaraka” in Nata, “Tolinejesina” in Suddhabangala, “Nannukannatali” in Sindhukannada and “Idisamayamura” in Chayanata. Their central item was “Etavunara” in raga Kalyani, which the duo took up in a detailed manner giving adequate justice to every aspect and presented in a befitting manner.
Bangalore-based Arjun Kumar on the mridangam and G. Guruprasanna on the Kanjira provided excellent support to Nagaraj-Manjunath duo and played a riveting tani avartanam in adi tal, though they had stretched it too much.
M.V. Chandrasekhar on the mridangam and Nerkunam Dr. S. Sankar on the kanjira too provided excellent support to Lalitha-Nandhini duo.
They too played the tani avartanam in adi tala in an enjoyable manner.
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