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Accompanied by mysore shirkanth - violin ,neyveli nArAyanan - mridangam and aniruth athreyA - kanjirA
1. Sarasijakshi ninne kori marulukonnadira - Nayaki - Rudrapatnam Venkatramayya
2. thyagarAja gurum AshrayE (raga sketch) - kedAram - MDR
3. vandE vAsudEvam (R N S) - shree rAgam - AC
6 mins alApanai , 4 mins violin,
7 mins neraval in "sarasIruhAnanam cakra viprAjitam "
6 mins swaras
4A. avathAraya maMeeshwaram devadi devam (R N S T) - poorvikalyAni - narayana theerthar
16 mins alApanai ,8 mins violin
6 mins neraval in "tavatAtra tavasa saNthosheetOham??" and 9 mins swaras
4B. tani for 17 mins
5. sivakAma sundari - mukhAri - psivan
Speech by Smt padmavathy for 13 minutes
6. RTP - sindhubhairavi
11 mins rAga alApanai, 5 mins violin return, 7 mins tAnam and 4 mins pallavi and 5 mins swaras , in total 32 mins
pallavi line "mAl marugA murugA guha shanmughA magapathiyum?? vithiyum thozhum "
7. pavamAna
When one listens to say Madurai mani or MD Ramanathan , one of the most striking aspect of their music especially in the alApana rendition is they stick to the core of rAga bhAvam , especially in the first 15 seconds or so , the ambiguity of overlapping rAgas is completely eliminated . I am speculating that those musicians kept the time test sangathis in foreground and at the same time they also innovated with manOdharma sangathis of that rAgam on that day@that concert. In short the balance of memory(time test sangathis)and manOdharma sangathis is the key that every musician has to march.
Abhishek over the years I am observing in every concert that he is not able to draw the lakshman rekha proportion and always goes atleast for few sangathis in few overlapping ragas and also at times the tinge of hindustani is far higher than carnatic.Let me call this as hyper manOdharmam influencing rAga bhavam purity(HyMainrabhapu syndrome)
HyMainrabhapu syndrome was very evident :
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# The alApanai of shree rAgam was kind of boxed with a darbAr heavy tinge in the beginning and also there was lot of overlap with many sangathis of darbAr , nevertheless most of the time it was shree rAgam and he sang it beautifully.
# Usually rAgas like hamsanandi musicians sing it with a slant towards hindustani , but this PoorvikalyAni alApanai the slant to hindustani was very steep, that too there were few raga alapanai phrases more like riaz of hindustani, kind of not sure if I was attending a carnatic or hindustani concert.
Putting Hymainrabhapu aside:
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# the first two was a cracker start especially the aesthetics of MDR's defining kedaram was superb in all counts , his voice sareeram really gelled with the krithi conception so well
# The neraval of shree rAgam is so very rare and he did a fine job and the swaras were excellent . THe main poorvikalyAni swaras were very good with a nice neraval, the krithi rendition just did not gel perfectly with the percussionists in the pallavi.
# mukhAri was brilliant. The sabha patron Smt.Padmavathy spoke for about 12 mins and praised the artists , she was bit emotional with abhishek . Incidentally she made a remark that shree rAgam neraval itself was sufficient for a pallavi . I was disturbed by that comment , nevertheless when she said at the end if rasikas are willing to stay we can have pallavi , I shouted pallavi and yes it was
# The pallavi was very well done , being sindhubhairavi which is exactly at the cross roads of hindustani and carnatic , he sang with an excellent manOdharma Pidi and he did a fine job in thAnam. The pallavi line was creative line and a lot of laya vinyAsam was done , overall excellent pallavi . BTW I am one rasika who likes pallavis in every rAga under the sun, for one reason you get rAgabhAvam in plenty that traditionally escapes in the words of a krithi
, nevertheless sindhubhairavi pallavi is perhaps once a lifetime experienceAccompanists:
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Neyveli narayanan played beautifully and was very sensitive to the lyrics ,I especially liked his tani though slightly long had a lot of strokes .ANirudh played well , but his volume was very loud at times . Mysore shrikant played very well in the second half of the concert , possibly in the first half the violin tone was not that great .
All said and done ,abhishek is one of the finest male voice vidwan, a very impressive voice sareeram and his manodharmam though having hymainrabhapu syndrome is still breathtaking at few places. Incidentally abhishek is not seen that high in chennai concert circles, I am assuming in his age bracket of musicians he may be just be a victim of politicking, so traveling to annanagar was worth every penny .If he works consciously in eliminating the long cycle trespasses into other rAgas , he would be one of the biggest carnatic stars in years to come, as his voice sareeram and shruthi suddham is very immaculate. Also there was only 6 numbers in his concert , that speaks a lot in his depth.
Overall a very good to excellent concert for 2 hours and 20 minutes exclusive of speech .
