paTTAbhirAma pandit & Ashwath nArAyanan@BVB on Nov 14th,2010

[rajeshnat]

paTTAbhirAma pandit & Ashwath nArAyanan@BVB on Nov 14th,2010
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Vocal : paTTAbhirAma pandit & Ashwath nArAyanan
Violin : B.Anandakrishnan
Mrudangam : Shertalai anandakrishnan

Concert duration : 1 hr and 40 minutes
Occasion : KVN Birthday celebrations

The occasion of the concert was Sowkhyam superking KVN's birthday celebrations conducted by his wife Smt padmA and his daughter Smt anuradha as part of KVN & ariyakudi trust . The concert was held on Sunday Morning .

PaTTAbhirAmA is to me a fabulous musician , having heard him thrice all I could say is he keeps Shri KVN's style and adding significantly with his dose of creativity. The other disciple Ashwath narayanan is not known to me till I heard him today, he is a young musician and has spent very few years with KVN.

The concert was scheduled to start at 09:15 AM and I was on time . I was expecting an OK crowd but certainly the crowd was pathetic in the heart of mylapore . I was expecting few musicians to attend the only musician whom I saw was our vidyArthi and he was the invited chief guest to light the kuthuvilakku.The concert started at 09:40 pm after an invocation song and a brief introduction . They took little too long time to adjust the microphones.

Atleast today paTTAbhi and ashwath had few exclusive KVN's quality , I guess if each of the sishyas has the other then they would certainly get closer to the jAmbhavan KVN . paTTABhi has a real spark of imagination , he brings in lovely nuances of raga bhAvam , but what he needs is about half a dozen microphones , he has an extremely poor posture .At times his imagination never reaches the first rasika of any concert , if I could say the only rasika who always hears every bit of the concert. If you are still wondering who that first rasika is ,it is his microphone.

Ashwath on the other hand has a real solid sareeram , if I could say the pitch of near KVN where it reaches a zone where every sangathi has got solid power without a dose of shouting.His posture is really superb , if I could say very kvnish style with not much neck movement every sangathi indeed reaches the omnipresent first rasika . But I felt ashwath did not sing that much in mandara sthayi.

The start was an invocation by two young vidushi disciples of Smt anurAdhA and it was really superb , it is sheer delight to hear this very extraordinary rAga reetigowlai , the delight was a very rare krithi a thyagarAja krithi (#1A). The duo commenced the concert with a lovely gentle nAttaikurinji varnam(#1B) , the sowkhyam descent was really well done but in the second speed it was a bit wacky . The second in asAveri(#2) is one of my favourite numbers and the duo sang well , the finish was bit abrupt.

#1A. invocation song was sadguru svAmiki sATiyu lEdani - reetigowlai - T
#1B. ChalamelA - nAttaikurinji - rangaswamy nattuvanAr
#2. rarAmA - asAveri - T

KVn came in style with the third song a rare bilahari krithi (#3) of papanAsam sivan, KVN has a lovely style to speed up the kAlapramAnam with a lovely dose of kanakku in swaras and I heard that very well in bilahari swaras for this rare krithi, I particularly liked the creativity of paTTABhi

Ashwath sang beautifully alApana of paNtuvarAli , his sareeram is in general more towards the high side and I liked his rendering .The krithi (#4) , a T number more associated with Smt MLV and I could see they were racing it too fast with a neraval that was very good(but I expected a better as they were students of neraval narayanaswamy) , but certainly the swaras were too short and abrupt and did not come out well. KVN that was lost in the ball voTTam paNtu varAli , came back in kuntalavarAli (#5) . The duo synced up beautifully with this lovely number with a really superb shruthi suddham

#3. karpagAmbikE kaDaikkEN (S)- bilahari - Psivan
swaras for 6 mins
#4. raguvara nannu (R,N,S) - paNtuvarAli - T
6 mins alApanai of PantuvarAli , 4 mins violin return
5 mins neraval in manasuna nIki marulu konnAnu sajjana
3 mins of swaras
#5. bhoGEEndra sAyinam - kuntalavarAli - ST

[rajeshnat]

Kvn was in full glory in the main and it was indeed a superb testimony for what KVN gave us - an extraordinary sowkhyam with intense carnatic classicism . ShankarAbharanam alApana was really well done with pattAbhi taking the lead but really superb support by Ashwath, they bought the kVN zing with the T krithi (#6), KVN had bought lovely embellishments and pattabhi and Ashwath bought those with their rasayuta bhakthi rasam of sbharanam . THe neraval was really well done and the line taken was indeed apt to me it was real paramAnandamE. The swaras were very good but at times with pattAbhi's 90 degree turn , his creativity was not picked uniformly by the first rasika.

The concert winded quickly with a lovely shuruTTI(#7) and KVN is known to sing tirruppAvai very well and the duo did well with the same .

#6. swara rAga sudhA (R N S T)- shankarAbharanam - T
9 mins alApanai, 6 mins violin return
9 mins neraval in "paramAnandamE kamalamupai baka bhEkamu "
9 mins swaras and 8 mins tani
#7. vangakaDal - shuruTTi - anDAl tirruppAvai

The one who was consistent and who really stole the show was the violinist B.anandakrishnan , very good azhuttam and he had very good shruthi sowkhyam. To an extent shertalai was not consistent and his play did not lift the concert.

Overall the concert winded with a brief speech of shri neyveli and a prize distribution for few kids . I would have been happy if the concert went for atleast half an hour more, atleast that was advertized in the hindu, late start should be compensated and not cut short.

I came with a feeling that I have to listen more of ashwath, just as pattAbhi. KVN came and went in a jiffy,overall a good to very good concert.

[grsastrigal]

I entered the hall when they were in the middle of Bilahari. For me, Pattabhiram pandit is a revelation. A “Philips” employee from Bangalore, I heard last year in the same function and awestruck. This year too. His involvement in each and every phrase, not rushing to finish a kriti in a haphazard way, were delight to watch. He imbibed his Guru’s BANI in full. His ever-smiling face is another advantage.

His Shankarabhranam Ragam was such a beauty. Honestly, after a long time I heard a 10 minutes superb Shankarabharanam. I leave it to the rasigas to listen to this and decide

Ashwath’s Pantuvarali Alapana was also very well rendered. Here is a guy who has got a great potential. There is another Sikkil Gurucharan (in height) !!!!. Raguvara was very good.

They are not actually duos. but performed together without any "mis-understanding". That itself showed, how they followed their Guru in full.

As concluded by “vidhyarthi” in his speech, both of them have got immense potential. They reilgiously followed Shri KVN’s bani. No confusions. NO hiccups. Great rendering.

Listen to his 5 minutes rendition…..

Sad to see less crowd. I also felt very bad and upset when all the prize winning children came to the hall 2 minutes before the prize distribution and made the hall half full. Even Gayatri Girish with his daughter (she also won a prize) came at the last moment where they could have come an hour before to listen to the concert. As “Vidhyarti” pointed out in his speech, “now a days listening to other’s concert or appreciating has become a “Sin” and after a concert or two all youngsters expect award/reward”

http://www.sendspace.com/file/0qf1wg

[rajeshnat]

They are not actually duos. but performed together without any "mis-understanding". That itself showed, how they followed their Guru in full.
....
Sad to see less crowd. I also felt very bad and upset when all the prize winning children came to the hall 2 minutes before the prize distribution and made the hall half full. Even Gayatri Girish with his daughter (she also won a prize) came at the last moment where they could have come an hour before to listen to the concert.

GRS
They are not long term duos , but they were duos only for their Guru's 87th birthday celebration. Also you must have noted , apart from "no misunderstanding", pattAbhi gave a lot of space to his counterpart.

When I entered at 09:15 AM , I was in the first10 count of rasikAs, pathetic crowd , even I felt very bad . I was thinking if Neyveli was not invited to light the kuthuvilakku and if GG's daughter did not get a prize , there may not even be one single performing vidwan/vidushi to show their respect to one of the finest vidwans shri KVN ,who must be a role model for all the performers.

[arasi]

Rajesh,
Yes. A giant like KVN, and a concert in honor of him being poorly attended, that too when the concert was a good one too. KVN, a musician's musician as well, and not even a few musicians were there
The few faithful geriatric attendees among them (!) who would have been there, were not present, it seems.

[malavi]

Yes it was a very good concert by the two sishyas of KVN.I am attending Pattabhiram s concert for the 3rd time.He reminds me of sri.KVN in many aspects.His raga alapanas and niraval esp.are real treat to the ears.
The sankarabharanam kriti brought back old memories to me as KVN taught us in the music collage years back.
ofcourse for such a wonderful concert attendance was very poor.Towards the middle of the concert suddenly many people started coming.later on we came to know they had all come for the prize destribution in connection with music competitions.
The two girls ,students of smt.Padma narayanaswamy,sang the reetigaulai kriti very well and sri.santanagopalan sir mentioned about that in his speech.
Aswath has got a very good voice.he was sri.KVN s student for a short time and after that he is smt.Padma s tudent .
on the whole it was a nice concert.