Lalgudi G J R Krishnan and Vijayalakshmi (Violin duet), Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan , 19/12/2018

[SrinathK]

Note : This post will be updated live.

Violin : Lalgudi GJR Krishnan, Lalgudi Vijayalakshmi
Mridangam : Patri Satish Kumar
Ghatam : U N Giridhar Udapa

44th Year Music Festival (2018)
Venue : Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Main Hall
Date : 19/12/2018

Missed the opening numbers due to work.
Song list :

1) mA ramaNan - hindOlam - roopaka (2 kalai) - Papanasam Sivan - Missed- Later confirmed that the concert started with this. No varnam then.

2)nee pada pankajamulanu - bEgaDa - Adi - Thyagaraja - S - Swaras at pallavi - The swaras when where yours truly finally made it to the venue.

3)manavinAlakinca rAdaTE - nalinakAnti - Adi (1 1/2 eDuppu) - Thyagaraja (Short Raga sketch at start)

4)Ragam tanam pallavi - hamsAnandi - khaNDa tripuTa 2 kalai 1/4 eDuppu - nee varuvAi ena nAn kAtthirundEn mana mOhana giridhAri - tani Avartanam in khaNDa tripuTa

rAgamAlika swaras in - dwijAvanti, durgA, brindAvana sAranga, darbAri kAnaDa, madhuvanti.

5)chinnan chiru kiliye - rAgamAlika (kApi, mAnD, vasanta, tilAng, mishra sivarajani (madyama shruti)) - Adi (tisra naDai) - Subramanya Bharati

6)tillAna - vAsanti - mishra chApu - Lalgudi G Jayaraman

7)nee nAma - sourAshtramam - Adi (1/2 Eduppu) - Thyagaraja - Mangalam

So I walk in just as the bEgaDa concludes with a korvai. This was followed by a racy rendition of manavyALa in nalinakAnti.

The short sketches of the Raga the duo play before starting a kriti are like sugar in the milk. But the best was to come.

GJR Krishnan took up an otherworldly hamsAnandi, pushing the instrument to its expressive limits of phrasing (he experiments with the capabilities of the Violin at digging and churning the ocean of phrases of all shapes and forms - slow, fast, clipped, short, long, lingering, plain, gamaka laden, rhythmic, arrhythmic, chords, and the like), where he did a superb Graha bhEdam on R1 to hindOlam. Vijayalakshmi took turns in sharing the alApana playing flowing phrases soaked in melody.

An alapana of such specialty from the Lalgudi Siblings only means one thing - an RTP. And sure enough, the siblings then started tanam which brought back memories of an amazing RTP at the Academy many years ago (also in hamsAnandi). In fact, I need to mention that this is a rare occasion that an RTP is actually the main number in a concert. The need for a main kriti has caused the RTP to become a customary dessert item over the decades, so the change was welcome. Tanam is a place where every violinist wants to showcase their technical skill on the instruments, and the Lalgudi school has their own special techniques of playing and adding special effects, and all of them were used in good measure.

The siblings go to the extent of composing lyrics even though it is an instrumental concert. Their pallavis are very special and they must be called the Pallavi violinists for their command over RTP.

Nobody, I mean, nobody plays swaras on solo instrumental like the Lalgudi duo. Their laya control is so good they're now freely experimenting with very dangerous, tricky korvais and calculations on stage, and if by chance one doesn't fall in line, they just manufacture another one right then and there and that does the job -- you heard me right. They're mass producing these things now.

While their sarvalaghu would go on all day if given the time, although they almost always end it with some expressive rhythmic pattern or another. That they are able to do this again and again in any rAga or tAla without losing the musically uplifting aesthetic created by their melody is testament to their vidwat and a lifetime of hard work and dedication. Contrary to what some people think, it is not really contrived and there were many creative surprises in their swara playing.

Patri Satish Kumar gave some special support throughout the concert. In the tani, he made the mridangam ring like a string in perfect pitch. Using simpler playing, he brought special spice to his stroke play and it was a very lively experience. The eDuppu point and the half eDuppus in this tAla are tricky points, but it didn't faze him one bit. Giridhar Udupa was excellent on the ghatam and handled very notorious calculations well in his replies. They concluded with a korvai and the pallavi was closed off with a nice arithmetic progression of a pattern.

And what swaras where those that came in the rAgamalika after the tani. Every round was just genius! I have no words to describe the possibilities of expression of these rakti ragas on the violin. It is not at all easy to play kalpanaswaras with ragAs like durgA or darbari kAnaDa, but they did, and how! The return to hamsAnandi came out of nowhere and surprised everyone on stage, and it took another round of korvais before the pallavi was concluded.

chinnan chiru kiLiyE made for good dessert. The duo give their own refreshingly original raga touches and flourishes wherever the room permits.

The vAsanti tillAna of Lalgudi Jayaraman is a very, very romantic piece (a personal favourite) that just drips with melancholy. A special touch of the percussionists staying silent for a while in the charanam before gently joining in was a beautiful moment. No one who has heard this number can ever not be moved by the beauty of the composition. And then the traditional mangalam to end a very beautiful concert, lasting just 2 hours.

The Lalgudi school has been the romantic among the violin styles of Carnatic Music - combining cerebral brilliance with beautiful expressiveness. Lalgudi G J R Krishnan and Vijayalakshmi are among the senior most musicians in CM. They have brought in their own original expressions and styles and a wide variety of ideas into their presentations - taking the beauty of the music to the next level. They have in many ways (and this is a big statement I'm making) surpassed the mark set by their illustrious father and guru and have built many a floor on top of what he built in his lifetime, using that as the base. It was an expression LGJ himself used and did in his own way, and so it continues.

The sore point was the nearly empty hall (probably because the pricing was also on the very high side for anything other than the balcony? Nah. Even up there there were like only a dozen others next to me). With all due respects to the vocalists, this paints a sorry figure for instrumental music, that too music of this level. The rasikas are really giving instrumental concerts second class treatment as a whole.

Now that I heard this, I must not miss the Academy concert coming up next. And I hope rasikas who read this post make sure not to either. It's on this Sunday, so I expect a better crowd.

[gajaa]

Great to see that you have already started to execute your strategy! Super and kudos to you

[SrinathK]

It almost worked for a while, but for the following :
1) I need a phone that keeps up the 4G inside the halls. No proper internet signal means your live review was dead before it began. Fortunately, the net held up this time.
2) Damn you autocorrect!!! No seriously, it wasn't letting me type the songlist at all, changing everything. Someone should pass a law to make it illegal.
3) Typing on the phone is a pain in my thumbs (ok, I don't type with them, still). Most of the annoyance is searching for the right symbols and disabling autocaps and what not, a huge chore on a phone keyboard.
4) Make sure not to write in present tense. This isn't a multi-post review.
5) I cannot afford to get logged out while editing as the concert waits for none. Thank god the back button preserves my edits. So I must make very small edits. Fortunately that edit button works for a couple of days. All in all, I've made 19 edits so far.
6) Keep that phone battery charged at all costs! This is why I didn't finish the review earlier. Result is an extra 30 min at home.
7) I need to add the numbers to the song list later. That's a bit of a pain. But given my constraints, it's quite likely that I will miss the opening numbers on weekdays.
8) You still need to spend some extra time writing down your thoughts when it's all over.

On the plus side, I write them as I hear and see them, which means I miss nothing live. But it also means I can't sit back and just relax and enjoy the music as much as I like. But still... well worth it. It works. Next time, I should have got the hang of it.

[rajeshnat]

2)nee pada pankajamulanu - bEgaDa - Adi - Thyagaraja - S - Swaras at pallavi - The swaras when where yours truly finally made it to the venue.

....
4)Ragam tanam pallavi - hamsAnandi - khaNDa tripuTa 2 kalai 1/4 eDuppu - nee varuvAi ena nAn kAtthirundEn mana mOhana giridhAri - tani Avartanam in khaNDa tripuTa

rAgamAlika swaras in - dwijAvanti, durgA, brindAvana sAranga, darbAri kAnaDa, madhuvanti.

.......
The sore point was the nearly empty hall (probably because the pricing was also on the very high side for anything other than the balcony? Nah. Even up there there were like only a dozen others next to me). With all due respects to the vocalists, this paints a sorry figure for instrumental music, that too music of this level. The rasikas are really giving instrumental concerts second class treatment as a whole.

Srinathk
The review is as good as though maestro LGJ is writing . I was thinking after your promise of writing a review of MS great grand daughters you will not keep up to your promise.

I donot know if you had noticed it see all the ragamaliga swaras of RTP all are hindustani tinge ragas . Personally this is the zone that I love the most. I am pretty sure that siblings rotated each of the ragas to give that melodic that had a systemic muse.

I think empty hall of instrumental concerts is getting more and more higher it is just not rasikas apathy, there are more and more quality vocalist so even an occasional concert of instrumentalist becomes a more rare occasional concert for every rasika.

write more will get u 5G

[SrinathK]

Music of madras website says that a grand total of 75 documented concerts happened yesterday alone. While the sponsorship and venues are now at an all time high, this also means that the crowd gets spread very thin across the venues. In virtually all the sabhas except on weekends, most of the seats are barely half full. There are not really that many people out there as an audience. But there is also lot of proactive effort and new talent coming in, and opportunities are opening up.

Unfortunately most of our gen only manages to get home well after the last concert has concluded on weekdays - the work culture has become work every microsecond till layoffs or death, whichever is sooner, so that they can replace you with the next victim for slaughter, to what ultimate end only God knows - probably to support the hospital industry. Even basic needs like food, air, water and sleep are luxuries these days where you have 10000 different types of T shirts on Myntra to choose from. Maybe it is all a grand plan to reduce the world population in a few generations....

The age demographic in nearly all sabhas is either old or very old with a few youngsters on half yearly leave and practically nobody in between. I suppose this has been a perennial problem all last century and still here we are. But with so many free concerts, we as an audience need to be more proactive.

[rajeshnat]

srinath
u can move your last post to the thread problem of plenty