The occassion was Shri pApanAsam Sivan's 118th birthday celebrations.
abhisEk' concert could be described as somewhat like lehmann brothers syndrome. It sparked for the first few numbers , but the main that went into a tailspin that landed too much into hindustani terrain and had too much of convoluted sangathis.
abhisek has a style of almost singing rAga alApanai sketch for almost all numbers.His start was a very rare pApanAsam Sivan's nAttai krithi that I heard it for the first time . The charanam line went something like "uLLamurugum baktha kOdigaLidaiyil kaLLa vEshamitta oruvan ..... dhayakarA paraathparaa kabaalee" in nAttai was an apt one that just gave a glimpse of the phenomenal vaggeyakkara who just transposed sanskritized thamizh very beautifully. nAttai was followed with dhanyAsi alApanai, his handling of balakrishnan pAdamalAr was awesome.
Hindustani tinge started from here onwards , possibly for this famous number "parAtparA paramEshwarA" in vAchaspati , I kind of liked his treatment , the swaras and the krithi rendition was more carnatic but the neraval in vAchaspathi was bit more hindustAni, nevertheless one has to give credit for his manOdharmam.
Lehmann brothers syndrome started in and out in the next main in mOhanam. mOhanam alApanai for the first 5 minutes was very very light almost the signal was as week as tuning to a short wave AIR westindies -india match at JamaicA. The valour of mOhanam was brought out only after 10 minutes of alApanai, just when there were brilliant karnAtic touches , his manOdharmam became convoluted in the alApanai almost mOhanam became HIndustani bhUpAli(assuming bhUpALi is hindustAni equivalent of carnatic mOhanam).
mOhanam came back carnatic with the most expected kapAli krithi , but here the composer was very crafty, he made the pallavi line quite easy , suddenly the thamizh words of kapAli was a steep climb for abhisEk. Personally I found him not connecting too well here both in rAga anubhavam and his krithi interpretation. Usually one hears a garland of swaras in mOhanam , abhisEk gave quite a few short bursts , then went into a bit of little excessive kanakku swaras and just wrapped with few good sarvalaghu swaras in the end , overall I found his manOdharmam in mOHanam swaras a bit convoluted .
shriranjani with ini oru kanam followed not as a chiselled and fast rendering but was a more leisurely rendition.He took a virttham with a long sindhu bhairavi rendition liked it the most as it was suiting CM-HM combo style ended with mANd with a famous krithi rendition of rAManai bhajithAl
The violinist usually plays wonderfully , but her day was kind of masked and limited to abhisek's challenging manOdharmam, liked her the most in her mOhanam main return perhaps felt atleast she could have played and then abhisek could have sung .The anticipation of hari narayanan (Shri TK Murthy's sishya)was always there ,perhaps if there was a better mrudangam nAdham I would have loved it much more. His tani was quite good.
I am attending Sivan's celebrations in NGS for the past few years , to me this concert was not as appealing to what I attended before(Smt premA rangarAjan and sikkil gurucharan in last 2 years were just top class)in thematic sense. Why just 1 hour 50 minute concert??
:(On a side note , I was a big fan of abhisek ,especially his nalinakANthi last year at PSBB school and a year before an out of the world varALi and a thillANA in asAveri (his own composition) were just manOdharmam that stayed too much in control , but yesterday it was not that appealing as he strayed too much into hindustAni land with quite a lot of convoluted patterns. On the most positive note , usually he tends to move his neck too much away from the mike but yesterday he did not do the same.
1. aDimai mEL kOpamA (RS) - nAttai
2. balakrishnan pADamalar (R) - dhanyAsi
3. parAtparA paramEshwarA (N,S) - vAchaspathi
neraval in "hariyaNum kAna ariyajyothi ???"
4A. kApALi(R S T) - bhUpALi
4B. tani
5. ini oru kanam (RS) -shreeranjani
6A. viruththam rAManai bhajithAL nOivinai theerumE - sindhubhairavi + mAND
6B. rAmanai bhajithAL - mAnd
7. THere was no mangalam --- dont know why??? :rolleyes:
