TNS Krishna @ Nadopasana, Dombivli, Mumbai on 6/2/2011

[tyagarajadasa]

I am a big fan of TNS and his son. I went to the concert expecting to get a treat and praying that Krishna would not sing Hamsanandi or Shubha Pantuvarali, which I hate, as main or sub-main! And I thank God for listening to my prayers.

But it was surely not a treat. No! I left exactly one hour and a half hours after the concert began at 7:30. Could not stand more of the torture. The reasons for my disappointment are follows: (Krishna is one of the most amazing musicians of our generation and I was disappointed with the concert for absolutely no fault/ lapse of his.)

1.) The concert was supposed to begin at 7 pm but was delayed because of a felicitation function. One man (supposed to a faculty of a local Management institute) spoke some irrelevant non-sense about his not knowing anything about music and how he thanked God for it and prayed to Him to let him remain the same.

2.) The sound system was just unbearably loud. Krishna has a loud, open-throated way of singing. On top of that were extremely loud percussionists (Mridangam, Ghatam and Morsing) The Ghatam artiste was just banging on the instrument frantically and the Morsing artiste never paused. All this added to the clamor and the result was boisterous, unaesthetic and highly unpleasant music. May be it was loud from where I sat. I could not have moved farther behind because the hall was full!
I am sorry I could not catch the names of the accompanists, except the Mridangist, Shri K.B.Ganesh who formerly used to live in Mumbai and has now shifted to Kerala. Nadopasana being a Malayali cultural organization promotes Malayali talent by organizing concerts of big artists from Chennai (and often people from Kerala) and Malayali accompanists. All accompanists had difficult-to-pronounce cities prefixed to their names and I somehow could not catch them. But I can assure that none of them were known people.

3.) It was a hot day and there ought to be fans as the hall was not an AC hall. This greatly added to my irritation.

The list up to 9:00 pm was as follows:

vandanamu -sahAna - Adi -T- R
shObillu- jaganmohini - rUpakam - T - S @ saptaswara
sAmajavara - hindOLam - Adi - T -R,N,S @ vEdashirO
gAnamUtE- gAnamUrti - Adi -T
sItAvara- dEvagAndhAri - Adi- T
alagallAla - madhyamAvati- T

vandanamu was sung with deep bhAva follwed by a brisk shobhillu. A super fast round of swarams with amazing arithmetic patterns at saptaswara was just mind boggling. The hindOLam Alapana was out of the world. It was truly mesmerizing. The violinist played very well. The neraval was short and swarams had nice patterns with a very very very explosive (but a superb) korvai. gAnAmUrtE was again very fast and noisy.
sItAvara was just OK due to problem # 2 above and also because of the superfast rendition that robbed the kriti of its beauty. The next item was tooooo brisk for my convenience and I decided to leave! Had sItAvara been a bit slower and sung with deeper bhAva, I would have sat on.

The crowd seemed to enjoy though. May be they are used to the clamor+hot ambience as this was the third concert in the series. Anyone else who attended pl fill in!

[S.Balaji]

Hi Gokul

What was supposed to be a treat ended up as a retreat ! How did you get the concert details . Pls provide contact nbrs.