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Violin : M Chandrasekaran and Bharathi
Mrudangam : kamalakar Rao
Kanjira : Bangalore S Purushottaman
Concert Type : Nirvana - no concert to follow
Day/Duration : Saturday/ ~ 90 minutes
Occassion/COncert Type : 1st anniversary Function of Prof TRS/Free
Crowd : ~75
Hall : Arkay Convention Hall , Luz , mylapore
After the homage function of Prof TRS ,the super senior violinist MC presented a violin concert with his daughter Bharathi . I have personally only heard MC playing as an accompanist and I have never heard Vidushi bharathi in any concert . Also only very recently I heard Kamalakar Rao in a live concert , to me personally it was a great feeling to hear this combination of MC- kamalakar rao who are playing for 6 to 7 decades.
MC informed at the beginning the complete song list and he said all the numbers were handpicked as a tribute to TRS with one exception of gowrimanohari where he said TRS is known for vasudevacharya krithi of Garuda gamana vasudeva and he did not know it . He told since he did not know that MV krithi , he will instead play the popular gurulekha.
01. behag varnam by TRS???
02. pancha mAtanga (RS,S) - malahari - MD
03. gurulEkha yetuvanti (R,S) - gowrimanohari - T
5 mins alapana and 6 mins swaras
04. varanArada(S) - vijaysri -T
3 mins swaras
05A. RTP Bilhari of TRS
raghukula tilakudai velasina ramachandrudai mApAli devudu shree
6 mins alapana , 5 mins tAnam and 8 mins pallavi
05B. tani for 16 mins
05C. swara ragamalika for 11 mins in bilahari + ranjani + dwijAvanti + revati
06. Oli padaitha kanninAi - ragamaliga (maand?? + kapi) - bharathiyar
07 . mangalam
Positives:
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1. When vocalist indeed take up lot of nadaswara like pidis and if those vidwans can be associated with nadaswara bAni , I think MC violin style has also a lot of overlap where he takes a significant dose of nadaswara pidi. I personally like this import- may be we can call MC violin as nadaswara bAni.
2. While behag passed quickly as a varnam , the malahari krithi of TRS is quite unique with exceptional TRS - watermark cuts and MC reproduced TRS style of malahari . THe next was a conscious durita kala play in vijaysri and MC referred a particular concert in remote place where he fondly recollected how TRS played that vijaysri and swar ah ah s. I wish we have the recording of that particular vara narada.
3. TRS bilahari is one of its kind and MC and Bharathi played a miniature pallavi of TRS . The alapana and taanam were very measured and the pallavi was well played with MC singing few sangathis to start with. Post tani in the style of trs , MC and bharathi played a ragamaliga neraval and then swaras . Bharathi played for ranjani raga and the next two dwijavanti and revati - MC played. I wish they played more .The last bharathiyar number was a quick finish and the melody of their violin was just getting better and better.
4. While MC played more in madhyama kala with more bass effect , bharathi violin was in more higher registers . She did play well and she was not just chugging along with her father.
5. I immensely enjoyed kamalakar rao . In this concert i could see his guru PMI - a sudden flash of fast touches i think in vijaysri was really good . He is old but still his playing has not come down that noticably with his age . I wish he comes more often to chennai then being a resident of rajahmundry. BSP had a very minimal role and he gave the best support during tani and vijasri swara return.
one thing that did not go well:
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1. The tonal quality of the violin in first half was bit rough and only as concert got progressed it got more and more better. The AC was possibly one reason.
It is nice for two senior vidwans Mc, Kamalakar rao and other two relatively young artist to really give a heartfelt tribute to TRS in a style that was reminiscent of the tala raga swaroopan.
Overall very good concert .