Vocal : Sanjay Subrahmanyan
Violin : S Varadarajan
Mrudangam : Neyveli Venkatesh
Ghatam : N Guruprasad
Morsing : B Rajashekhar
List :
01 kAmajanaka ripuguNA – gauLA – Adi – Swathi Thirunal
02 rAmA ika nannu brOva rAdA – sahAna – rUpakam – Patnam Subramanya Iyer ( S )
03 EkAmranAtHam bhajEham – gamakakriya / pUrvikalyANi – Adi x 2 – Dikshitar ( A )
04 kOri sEvimparArE – kharaharapriya – Adi – Thyagaraja ( A,N,S )
neraval & Swaras @ ‘( paramAtmuni haruni) kOri sEvimparArE kOrka lIDEra’
05 ambara cidambara – janaranjani – Adi – Muthu Tandavar
06 kaLabEDa kolabEDa – gOpikAtilakam – khaNDachAp – Basavanna ( A )
07 RTP – nATakurinji – caturashra tripuTa , 2 kaLai , 2 aksharam eDuppu
pallavi line ‘ nATTaikurinji enbAr siraindu engaLadu’
rAgamalika swaras in nATa, kurinji, sAma , navarasa kannaDa and jOg
tani Avartanam
08 nArAyaNa tE namO namO – bihAg – Adi – Annamacharya
09 viruttam ( tIrthakaraiyinilE ) – rAgEshrI
ninnayE rati enru – rAgEshrI – mishra chAp – Subramanya Bharathi
10 kaLilO hari smaraNa – kApi – Adi – Muthaiah Bhagavathar
11 nI nAma rUpamulaku – saurAStram – Adi – Thyagaraja
The concluding concert of the long Annual Festival of Sri Rama Lalitha Kala Mandira, scheduled after almost a month after the series. And what a way to finish. Sanjay ( and the team) once again gave a fitting finale to the festival, to an overflowing audience. This being the weekend of Shivarathri, there were many compositions on Shiva in the menu.
Beautiful start with the gauLa composition of Swathi Thirunal, nice rounds of swaras for sahana. Hearing the poorvikalyani/gamakakriya composition for the first time from Sanjay – alapana was very good. Kharaharapriya alapana was in a different terrain. Some of the not so usual phrases, and he also ended with some stylish hop-skip-jump mode. Kori sevimparare ws classy. Neraval at the pallavi line, a couple of times he ‘prefixed’ the last lines of the charanam. Liked it. Good swaras too. Ambara chidambara, I think, was set to tune by Sanjay himself in janaranjani.
When he started gOpikatilakam, the hopes went high. I thought he is taking this up as main and predicted Shudhananda Bharathi’s ‘Ananda naTanam’ or so to follow. The alapana was for 7-8 minutes and he chose to sing the Basavanna Vachana, instead. Beautiful lyrics, dense in meaning.. one needs to give credit to the artist to bring such gems to the forefront.
When he started the Natakurinji alapana, I was dividing the remainder of the time to fit in a main and a pallavi. Long alapana and as is his wont, a fabulous tanam. Parring the main artist, Varadarajan played exceptionally well through out the evening. Stanard setting for a pallavi, but he did try trikalam or something of that sort. Again, as expected some memorable ragamalika. The 4-5 minutes of jOg, indeed stole the show. I guess, it is jog from the short ‘pramadavanam’ like phrase played by Varadarajan.
Tani Avartanam started with Venkatesh playing out the entire ‘phase one’ on the thoppi side. Guruprasad, who was the star of the evening, couldn’t fall behind, unbuttoned himself and played out his turn with ‘closing the aperture’ of the mouth of the Ghatam with his body, to an outstanding result. Now, Rajashekhar had to measure up and he did the same by blowing / without using his fingers for the same take. In fact, he was deploying the same technique for larger part of the evening, blow into the instrument rather than plucking. Noisy conclusion to the tani avartanam, overall excitement and decibel increase as well as the swaying of heads prevailed. But there was thunderous applause and a few cat-calls. All is well which appeals to the audience.
Quick formalities by the organiser ( used up 2-3 mins maximum) before Sanjay concluded with 2-3 short pieces. It had already over 3:15 hrs since the start.