Vocal : Rudrapatnam Brothers
Violin : Nalina Mohan
Mrudangam : C Cheluvaraju
Ghatam : Sukanya Ramgopal
List:
01 intha mODi (varNam ) – sAranga – Thiruvottiyur Thyagayya
02 praNamAmyaham shrI gaurIsutam – gauLa – Mysore Vasudevacharya ( S )
03 divAkara tanujam – yadukula kAmbOji – Dikshitar
04 mOhanakara muttukumara – nItimati – Koteeswara Iyer ( A,S )
05 evarikkai avatAramE – dEvamanOhari – Thyagaraja ( A,S )
06 pArvati ninnu nE – kalgaDa – Shyama Shasthri
07 swara rAga sudhA – shankarAbharaNam ( A,t,N,S,T ) * a mix of kriti and RTP, pallvi after neraval with trikAlam
neraval & pallavi at ‘paramAnandamE kamalamupai‘
rAgamAlika swaras in ranjani , janaranjani, karNaranjani, manOranjani
08 narajanma bandAga – kApi – Purandara Dasa
09 thillAna – Ananda bhairavi – Tanjavur Sankara Iyer
10 mangaLam – saurAshtram / madhyamavati
Ragam – Tanam – Krithi – Neraval – Pallavi – TrikAlam – Swaras – Ragamalika Swara and then tani avartanam. Probably a first of its kind. First for me, for sure. I have seen / attended ragam-tanam-kriti many a times. There were a few cases of ragamalika swaras at the end of the main kriti as well. But, yesterdays concert was unique in that front. That probably the highlight of the concert.
Sankarabharanam alapana ( alternated between the two) was somewhat ok, nothing to rave about it. Nalina Mohan did some beautiful passages in her turn adding to what the main singers did. Tanam was much better. There was a short discussion between the brothers during the violin alapana and I was sure something is in the offing. But then, they started singing swara ragasudha, which of course is a favorite of mine. The neraval (only one in the concert) was very nice and was done at the anupallavi line. Now the interesting turn of events. The neraval line is then extended as a pallavi line with trikalam singing and all that. The kriti itself was started half beat after samam. There was extensive kalpana swaras in Sankarabharanam. The karvai concluded and Cheluvaraju started his tani avartanam, but no, there was more to come. The elder brother started singing swaras in ranjani. Cheluvaraju retreated with an appreciative remark. They did a ‘ranjani mala’ of kalpana swaras between them, each time giving Nalina Mohan a chance to replay the same. She did a commendable job here. The whole thing concluded with a few rounds of pallavi line before handing over to Cheluvaraju and his companion. I liked the whole idea and it was done creditably well. They probably would have done the ‘ragamalika’ swaras as in a Pallavi before concluding the Sankarabharanam swaras. Cheluvaraju and Sukanya did an inspiring tani avartanam.
The rest of the concert was also good. Some nice rounds of gauLa swaras, shortish alapanas of neetimati and devamanohari ( violin version were even shorter for some reason). There was no other neraval. The kind of ragas selected for better treatment probably would not have made any impact with neraval. But the devamanohari swaras were very good. Started of on short, brisk swaras, they switched to very slow melodic longish phrases to some brilliant effect.
They have soft voices, softer for Dr Taranathan. Unlike other dueling vocalists (no pun intended), their voice do not add up to the usual 1+1=2 formula. They also do not have the aggressive musical posture. Their style of alapana , thus are usually sober affair. So is the swaras, but the impressive array of phrases and the synergy they bring is what I thought the specialty of their music, apart from the clear,’baroque-less’ singing with strict adherence to tradition.
Brain Drain 