mAmbalam Sisters@NGS(Mini) on June 30th,2009
-----------------------------------------------
This concert was a harikesAnjali concert ,hence all krithis rendered were composed by Harikesa mutthiah bhAgavathar
The sisters(chitra and vijayalakshmi) were accompanied by another sister Dr hemalatha - violin, their dad KS rangAchari - kanjirA , mrudangam- kallidakurichi sivakumar
1.varnam "mAtE malayadwaja" - khamAs
2.tappulanniyu(S) - bowLi
3. mAnamu kAvalenu (R,S)- sahAanA
7 mins alApanai, 5 mins violin return and 6 mins swaras
4. sArasamukhi - gowDamalhAr
5. sArasa dhala nayaNE - sAramati
6A.lambOdara sOdharA (R N S T)- kalyAni
alApanai for 12 minutes, 6 mins for violin , neravals and swaras for 5 mins each
neraval was in "kOrina varamunu nosangi"
6B. tani for 5 minutes
7. mAvoor vaLar -jOnpuri
8. thillAnA dheena tarAnArE?? ... padmanAbha dAsA??? - hamsAnandi
9. jayamangalam nithya subhamangalam - vasantA
One of the finest creations of HMB is the kamAs varnam, the sisters started very well and gave a very good start , the only drawback was a little excessive sound by mridangist which got adjusted after one of the rasikas passed the feedback.
The bowLi was sung very well with a crisp round of swaras .SahAna was sung by chitra, the alApana started quite well she lost a bit of emote which is so intrinsic in sahAnA but regained the quality quite well.The swaras and krithis were just good, I would have personally preferred it to be a little slower and careful build up of sahanA.
The ever popular creation of HMB gowDamalhAr was quite good. sAramati was the slow number and it was well presented very well synchronized. If all rAgas are sudda madhyama till main , very likely the main would be kalyAni. The alApana of kalyAni by vijayalakshmi was very good and it was very adequate .This rare krithi had few rounds of cittaswaras tuned by calcutta krishnamurthi and was in sankeerna nadai thAlam.
The main krithi started very well kind of right tempo not the usual drowsy kalyAni , but in general when there are dual singers performing in tandem 8 out of 10 times there is always a peril of one sister excelling and the other sister just singing it in mediocre fashion, possibly each of them are so well rehearsed that both of them prefer not to cut loose as a on spot manodharam. To me during both neraval and swaras the more well musically rounded sister vijayalakshmi presented it well , the other sister was just rendering it ok to good. To a great extent there was not much elaboration exhibited by the sisters in neraval and swaras, they could have gone more for sure that too in neraval .
All the tukkadas were excellent , infact the pick of the day for me was the jONpuri composed by HMB kind of describing madurai and meenAkshi .The violinist played with a lot of azhuttam overall and was very good , the sahana was a slight dip in quality. THe mridangist sivakumar was just good to very good ,there were few recurring moments where the voice did not gel that well with mridangam .The kanjirA artist was very average and a bit of letdown.
Overall the sisters always have a rich repertoire ,that was very well demonstrated (4 out of 9 is brand new to me), but could have been more elaborate in main and submain atleast .They never referred a chit of paper even once to the best of my knowledge ever krithi was internalized very well for the whole length of 2 hour concert. Overall a very good concert.
Note:
----
Just to cross check , in the photo url linked below,I am assuming vijayalakshmi is in the middle with the violinist hemalatha in the left and chitra in the right.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/fr/2 ... 150300.htm