Prasanna Venkatraman@Madhuradhwani On Dec 04th,2021
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Vocal: Prasanna Venkatraman
Violin : Vittal Rangan
Mrudangam : Shertalai Ananthakrishnan
Kanjira: Anirudh Athreya
Tambura : ??
Concert Type : Nirvana - No concert to follow
Day/Duration : Saturday/ 2 hours and 20 mins (06:50 PM to 09:10 PM)
Concert Type: Free Concert
Hall : Madhuradhwani, Luz ,Mylapore
Occassion : Aanmajothi - is that a sabha where they join with madhuradhwani
01. upacharamu jesevaru (S) - bhairavi - T
swaras for 5 mins
02. entE nerchina (S) - suddhadhanyasi (udayaravichandrika) - T
5 mins swaras
03. janani ninnuvina (R, N) - reetigowlai - Subbaraya sastri
5 mins alapana and 4 mins violin return
neraval in dhikkevaramma jagamula?? for 4 mins
04. vidajAlathurA(R) - janaranjani - T
6 mins alapana and 4 mins violin return
05. neeyE sharan shanmugha - kAmbOdhi - Papanasam sivan
06A. sukhi evarO (R S T) - kAnadA - T
12 mins alapana and 8 mins violin return
swaras for 12 mins
06B. tani for 21 mins
07. palukuthE nelathalli - karnataka devagandhari - AnnamAchArya
08A. viruththam - arumponE maniye - kedaragowlai +
engengu nee - dhanyasi?? +
yAdenum ariyA -kApi - Is that thayumanavar??
08B. eesan anbAr - kApi - papanasam sivan
09. nee naama - sowrashtram - T
Prasanna Venkatraman@Madhuradhwani On Dec 04th,2021
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rajeshnat
- Posts: 9928
- Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 08:04
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rajeshnat
- Posts: 9928
- Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 08:04
Re: Prasanna Venkatraman@Madhuradhwani On Dec 04th,2021
Singing or playing instruments with performance excellence in carnatic music is a gift bestowed to perhaps to one in a million . That is what i thought when i started hearing CM in 1980's but in the next 4 decades that count of performers has become one in thousand . There would have been may be 10000 in milllion rasikas in madras city then in 1980s possibly maharajapuram santhanam had 100000 in million who was the highest draw then.As years rolled we all know what happened since Jan 2020 unfortunate catastrophe .Certainly the biggest challenge is for rasikas to come and hear live concerts . They have to show patronage to a live concert . We should not sit in home and click a link and hear the concert, that too when you are in chennai, as there is no chance to have the undivided attention at home.
For a rasika like me ,there was this habit of going to concert spread roughly for 2 decades.Irrespective of whether i intensely like the concert or faintly like the concert , there was always a commitment to write in sangeetham or rasikas. Some years i have clocked close to even 60 to 70 in a year, atleast 50 was a minimal count. The oceanic experience of going to live concert only matters .Recording only matters to those artists who were fully dead/ or have significantly performed their best much much before i was born . All said certainly December is the month that gives enough flywheel for the CM to thrive for the rest of the year and slowly the brand and commitment of margazhi Chennai certainly has faded in the last 22 months.
I am calling my series of this December 2021 as "Goto LIve Concert Show -PAtronage Without Excuses Series" (GLICSPAWES 2021 for short). We have entered the apple watch - fitbit era - let me set a goal of say 8 concerts in this series from Dec to Jan 2nd week . I hope work also permits me to hear.
Over to GLICSPAWES - 2021 - 1 of 1
----------------------------------------
We have atleast two buckets of musicians, one who does minimal homework at home but creates an extreme spontaneous manodharmam in concert stage , another who does maximum homework but creates much lesser spontaneaous manodharma in concert stage . The former is say championed by Maharajapuram Vishwanatha Iyer and the latter is say championed by say maharajapuram santhanam, two approaches despite the two being father and son there was a diametrical opposite approach . What bucket Artists fall does not matter as long as there is an element of continued connectedness that artist is able to maintain with me as a rasika . The connect is entirely personal as each rasika has his/her own history of his/her previous experience. Prasanna fits more in the santhanam team.
Live concert experience ensures synaptic connection . In the synapse there is some expectation ,something you think the artist has to do , little bit of frown and ada cha why did he/she do it which is all lost in online concerts because simply you cannot give your undivided attention to art and artist
The concert was advertised to start at 06 30 PM , i never go late but as i went 7 mins later still the concert last minute audio check up was done as Madhuradhwani streams live . At that point i was wondering i hope the concert just does not end at 08 45 as it is just 2 hours . All said the concert started at 06 49 , quite frankly i thought Prasanna and team lost 19 mins of good music to present to start with.
At that point i wondered , usually i wonder always when concerts are not say more than 2 and half hours what is the point in singing a varnam, why cant the artist dash with a direct #2 with a bounty of swaras like say deva deva kalayamithe or a vasudevayani or may be a niravadhi sukha da in ravichandrika. All these thoughts kept me on and i was thinking there is not much point in singing the so called let me warm up with varnams due to 15 mins lost deficit time.
The first interesting live music connect happened (#1 surprise connect that i enjoyed) then. The brilliant Prasanna sang a brilliant bhairavi almost like submain what we colloquially call as chinna upacharamu .What a brilliant composition by sadhguru in bhairavi. What a flavour of carnaticness that this bhairavi krithi brings in, prasanna is like an academic topper who prepares so well . He sang a beautiful bhairavi with lovely throw of swaras particularly some anchors like pa pA ga ri sa ri was well done
What would be the second krithi , My mind was thinking then he will go with a usual standard fast two number a likely T krithi . THe second interesting connect happened (#2 surprise connect that i enjoyed) , my mind was thinking ravichandrika 10 mins back , not bad i got udayaravichandirka . I adore this number enta nerchina , i cannot recollect if there is any difference between udayaravichandrika and suddhadhanyasi , all said this raga and this composition is so charming . THe kalapramanan suits so well for #2 and swaras were well rounded with some impeccable return by this young vittal rangan- who has both press and melody.
My mind was wondering on conditioning with my concert experience. I assumed it will be a submain three in prati madhyama raga. But it was a meditative anchor of reetigowlai . with two T songs being done, i could not think atleast at that point any other song other than the reetigowlai defining krithi . Indeed it was janani ninuvina , very well balanced throw and krithi enunciation where prasanna neither lost the krithi words to ragam or raga bhava to words of krithi . I was bit surprised to hear a neraval with dikkevaramma , but quite frankly he was just continuing like krithi, the neraval was not a showcase of any neraval with variation in pattern ,it was just a bit of strategic timeout padded with significant repetition .
Janaranjani popped out and as expected i was thinking vidajalathura or one more pahimam shree and i only got vidajalathura . Prasanna excellence is centered only on intense madhyama kala, to an extent when he builds up little speed his excellence does not carry over to that phase as his madhyama kalam. The next surprise happened when i heard a rare kambOdhi , i googled to find his 3rd guru (after balamani and TK Govinda Rao), sanjay sings this song . Nice words on Lord Muruga but the flavour of kambOdhi was bit light , may be he took it too short and just wrapped the rare sivan krithi.
KAnadA experience with prasanna is quite heavily etched for me . May be 10 to 15 years back, he sang this same krithi and sang sukhi evaro neraval in the pallavi line which was new neraval to me then . I was thinking he may do that again , but he only sang the krithi with swaras after a lovely alapana . The krithi and first half of swaras appeared tightly etched to the flow of krithi and then with the second speed of kaanada swaras ,there was a bit of downpour but it was too short and i felt atleast at that moment my feel was why not more KanadA with standard anchors like gA gA.
With audience request he sang a rare Annamacharya krithi . Prasanna takes a lot of Nedunuri Krishnamurthy,i am assuming Nedunuri may have tuned this rare karnataka devagandhari krithi. The viruttam was a great one though the ragas were standard designer ragas , i liked it (#3 surprise connect that i enjoyed), the last kaapi sivan krithi was new to me , the thamizh words were lucid and the music remained intensely carnatic.
Vittal Rangan as an accompanist is appearing to me as a star in making . Lovely press and sunaadam in returns during swaras (#4 surprise connect that i enjoyed). Certainly this youngster will be like his senior greats like varadu, hn bhaskar, nagai sriram or akkarai . If there is some thing that i would like him to work him in the future is to cut the proportion in violin return in alapana , he was too long for all the alapanas that he played .
Both the percussion artists played very well and was in line with the flow and bhava of the song . The tani was definitely too long and took away the share of may be one or two more interesting tukkada.
All said , the young Prasanna , younger Anirudh and the youngest Vittal showed no compromise in intense classic excellence along with seasoned shertalai ananthakrishnan . I wish it was another 20 to 40 more minutes concert .For the on spot form , they could have taken it much more deeper and I would have come more satisfied
All said GLICSPAWES 2021 , 1 is done atleast 7 more to go !!!
Overall very good to excellent concert for 2 hours and 20 mins
For a rasika like me ,there was this habit of going to concert spread roughly for 2 decades.Irrespective of whether i intensely like the concert or faintly like the concert , there was always a commitment to write in sangeetham or rasikas. Some years i have clocked close to even 60 to 70 in a year, atleast 50 was a minimal count. The oceanic experience of going to live concert only matters .Recording only matters to those artists who were fully dead/ or have significantly performed their best much much before i was born . All said certainly December is the month that gives enough flywheel for the CM to thrive for the rest of the year and slowly the brand and commitment of margazhi Chennai certainly has faded in the last 22 months.
I am calling my series of this December 2021 as "Goto LIve Concert Show -PAtronage Without Excuses Series" (GLICSPAWES 2021 for short). We have entered the apple watch - fitbit era - let me set a goal of say 8 concerts in this series from Dec to Jan 2nd week . I hope work also permits me to hear.
Over to GLICSPAWES - 2021 - 1 of 1
----------------------------------------
We have atleast two buckets of musicians, one who does minimal homework at home but creates an extreme spontaneous manodharmam in concert stage , another who does maximum homework but creates much lesser spontaneaous manodharma in concert stage . The former is say championed by Maharajapuram Vishwanatha Iyer and the latter is say championed by say maharajapuram santhanam, two approaches despite the two being father and son there was a diametrical opposite approach . What bucket Artists fall does not matter as long as there is an element of continued connectedness that artist is able to maintain with me as a rasika . The connect is entirely personal as each rasika has his/her own history of his/her previous experience. Prasanna fits more in the santhanam team.
Live concert experience ensures synaptic connection . In the synapse there is some expectation ,something you think the artist has to do , little bit of frown and ada cha why did he/she do it which is all lost in online concerts because simply you cannot give your undivided attention to art and artist
The concert was advertised to start at 06 30 PM , i never go late but as i went 7 mins later still the concert last minute audio check up was done as Madhuradhwani streams live . At that point i was wondering i hope the concert just does not end at 08 45 as it is just 2 hours . All said the concert started at 06 49 , quite frankly i thought Prasanna and team lost 19 mins of good music to present to start with.
At that point i wondered , usually i wonder always when concerts are not say more than 2 and half hours what is the point in singing a varnam, why cant the artist dash with a direct #2 with a bounty of swaras like say deva deva kalayamithe or a vasudevayani or may be a niravadhi sukha da in ravichandrika. All these thoughts kept me on and i was thinking there is not much point in singing the so called let me warm up with varnams due to 15 mins lost deficit time.
The first interesting live music connect happened (#1 surprise connect that i enjoyed) then. The brilliant Prasanna sang a brilliant bhairavi almost like submain what we colloquially call as chinna upacharamu .What a brilliant composition by sadhguru in bhairavi. What a flavour of carnaticness that this bhairavi krithi brings in, prasanna is like an academic topper who prepares so well . He sang a beautiful bhairavi with lovely throw of swaras particularly some anchors like pa pA ga ri sa ri was well done
What would be the second krithi , My mind was thinking then he will go with a usual standard fast two number a likely T krithi . THe second interesting connect happened (#2 surprise connect that i enjoyed) , my mind was thinking ravichandrika 10 mins back , not bad i got udayaravichandirka . I adore this number enta nerchina , i cannot recollect if there is any difference between udayaravichandrika and suddhadhanyasi , all said this raga and this composition is so charming . THe kalapramanan suits so well for #2 and swaras were well rounded with some impeccable return by this young vittal rangan- who has both press and melody.
My mind was wondering on conditioning with my concert experience. I assumed it will be a submain three in prati madhyama raga. But it was a meditative anchor of reetigowlai . with two T songs being done, i could not think atleast at that point any other song other than the reetigowlai defining krithi . Indeed it was janani ninuvina , very well balanced throw and krithi enunciation where prasanna neither lost the krithi words to ragam or raga bhava to words of krithi . I was bit surprised to hear a neraval with dikkevaramma , but quite frankly he was just continuing like krithi, the neraval was not a showcase of any neraval with variation in pattern ,it was just a bit of strategic timeout padded with significant repetition .
Janaranjani popped out and as expected i was thinking vidajalathura or one more pahimam shree and i only got vidajalathura . Prasanna excellence is centered only on intense madhyama kala, to an extent when he builds up little speed his excellence does not carry over to that phase as his madhyama kalam. The next surprise happened when i heard a rare kambOdhi , i googled to find his 3rd guru (after balamani and TK Govinda Rao), sanjay sings this song . Nice words on Lord Muruga but the flavour of kambOdhi was bit light , may be he took it too short and just wrapped the rare sivan krithi.
KAnadA experience with prasanna is quite heavily etched for me . May be 10 to 15 years back, he sang this same krithi and sang sukhi evaro neraval in the pallavi line which was new neraval to me then . I was thinking he may do that again , but he only sang the krithi with swaras after a lovely alapana . The krithi and first half of swaras appeared tightly etched to the flow of krithi and then with the second speed of kaanada swaras ,there was a bit of downpour but it was too short and i felt atleast at that moment my feel was why not more KanadA with standard anchors like gA gA.
With audience request he sang a rare Annamacharya krithi . Prasanna takes a lot of Nedunuri Krishnamurthy,i am assuming Nedunuri may have tuned this rare karnataka devagandhari krithi. The viruttam was a great one though the ragas were standard designer ragas , i liked it (#3 surprise connect that i enjoyed), the last kaapi sivan krithi was new to me , the thamizh words were lucid and the music remained intensely carnatic.
Vittal Rangan as an accompanist is appearing to me as a star in making . Lovely press and sunaadam in returns during swaras (#4 surprise connect that i enjoyed). Certainly this youngster will be like his senior greats like varadu, hn bhaskar, nagai sriram or akkarai . If there is some thing that i would like him to work him in the future is to cut the proportion in violin return in alapana , he was too long for all the alapanas that he played .
Both the percussion artists played very well and was in line with the flow and bhava of the song . The tani was definitely too long and took away the share of may be one or two more interesting tukkada.
All said , the young Prasanna , younger Anirudh and the youngest Vittal showed no compromise in intense classic excellence along with seasoned shertalai ananthakrishnan . I wish it was another 20 to 40 more minutes concert .For the on spot form , they could have taken it much more deeper and I would have come more satisfied
All said GLICSPAWES 2021 , 1 is done atleast 7 more to go !!!
Overall very good to excellent concert for 2 hours and 20 mins
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CRama
- Posts: 2939
- Joined: 18 Nov 2009, 16:58
Re: Prasanna Venkatraman@Madhuradhwani On Dec 04th,2021
Rajesh, delighted to read your review after a long time. Continue to attend more concerts and flood the forum with your detailed reviews. Pl also give the link to the concert as now these are easily availble in the yt so that people can immediately go and listen to the concert.
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shankarank
- Posts: 4067
- Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16
Re: Prasanna Venkatraman@Madhuradhwani On Dec 04th,2021
Prasanna has a rakthi or jIvan his ringing voice which is only in a certain range for other artists including his Guru Sanjay. Prasanna has it across the range.
Shertalai and Anirudh brought no harsh tone to complement the ring of Prasanna's voice, very impeaccable accompaniment. And you can notice the kappi mridangam, the tara shadjam piDis are complemented with "din" playing than cApu. My brother reminded me, in kappi mridangam "din" is stronger than "cApu". This is one of the best sounding instrument in a long time in Arkay. And Anirudh being there enhanced the whole thing like a Charm.
bhAvattukkum kuraiccal illai, nalla muraiyIDu ( apt BhAva in the line with a strong plea!)
Idu oru sowkyamana concert.
Shertalai and Anirudh brought no harsh tone to complement the ring of Prasanna's voice, very impeaccable accompaniment. And you can notice the kappi mridangam, the tara shadjam piDis are complemented with "din" playing than cApu. My brother reminded me, in kappi mridangam "din" is stronger than "cApu". This is one of the best sounding instrument in a long time in Arkay. And Anirudh being there enhanced the whole thing like a Charm.
Adu SAstrivALODa ( Sri SyAmA SAstri) trademark ati vilOma eDUppu which is not there in this son's kriti except in pause and continue section of the line. svaratta poruttaratukku nalla yatiyum kUDa ( has a formation that can fit a svara ending nicely).
bhAvattukkum kuraiccal illai, nalla muraiyIDu ( apt BhAva in the line with a strong plea!)
Idu oru sowkyamana concert.