Vocal : Nisha Rajagopalan
Violin : B Raghuram
Mrudangam : H S Sudheendra
Ghatam : G Omkar Rao
List:
01 valachi vachi (varNam) – navaRagamAlika- Patnam Subramania Iyer
02 jaya jaya padmanAbha – sarasAngi – Swathi Thirunal
03 nannu brOva nIkinta – AbhOgi – Thyagaraja ( A,S )
04 saraguNa pAlimpa – kEdAragauLa – Ramanathapuram Srinivasa Iyengar ( A,N,S,T )
neraval& swara @ ‘varaguNa shESAdri varada venkaTEshwara’
05 hiranmayim lakSmIm – laLita – Dikshitar
06 RTP – kalyANi – chaturashra jhumpa , mishra nadai , ateeta eDuppu 2 akSaram??
pallavi line ‘ pankaja lOcani parvata vardhani pAhimAm, parama kalyANi’
rAgamAlika swaras in pUrvikalyANi, mOhana kalyANi, hamIr kalyANi
07 kaNDEnA gOvindana – chandrakAuns? – Purandara Dasa
08 viruttam ( nAl en Seyum) – aThANa , shivaranjani
kaliyuga mUrtiyAya – shivaranjani – ??
09 mangaLAm – saurAStram / madhyamAvati – Thyagaraja
Back to attending a concert after two months. I could be rusty. Not heard this artist in a live concert before. Not sure if she comes here often. Heard a couple of her radio concerts before.
Nisha and the team performed well, presented a good concert. Nice selection of kritis, appropriate elaboration, very well crafted pallavi. Very strong and impressive voice, easy and soothing in the higher registers ,pleasant mannerisms. Started on time and sang well past 7:00 pm.
Started off with navaragamalika varnam of patnam, finished it quick, moved into sarasangi composition of swathi Thirunal. A good and pretty long abhogi alapana came in soon, violin following more or less in the same pattern. Nannu brova is my favourite. Sang detailed rounds of swaras in second speed. Percussion support was impressive here.
She started her kedaragaula alapana at an unusual place in the high notes and fumbled a bit. However , she recovered quickly and sang some delightful phrases. Few dull moments in between, but she concluded well. Violin return was good. Saraguna palimpa , poochi masterpiece was impressive. Very good neraval ( I liked the way she sang the word shESAdri as sEshAdri) and good kalpana swaras too.
The customary honouring of the artists at this point wasn’t appropriately timed. Only 4 songs into the concert, it was obvious that a pallavi is in the offing. It could have shifted it post the pallavi.
Pallavi, probably was the highlight of the evening. Commendable kalyani alapana by both artists. Raghuram played some impressive passages in his turn. Tanam had nothing to talk home about. Pallavi was structured brilliantly. Both in the tAla selection and the nadai. I thought she did an ‘atheetha eDuppu’ (panka- ja , with ja on samam?) . Very cleverly crafted and executed trikalam, with Sudheendra doing some great job. Ragamalika swaras were chosen well, with raga names ending with kalyani and incorporating the raga names in the pallavi line.
There wasn’t much scope post the pallavi, but she sang a good viruttam and a devarnama before closing down.
Brain Drain 