Bharat Sangeet Utsav 2008 at Blore - Prof VVS & Sri RK Srika

[gundakriya]

Violin Duet : Prof V V Subramanian & V V S Murari
Mrudangam : Thiruvarur Bhakthavatsalam
Ghatam : Vaikom Gopalakrishnan

Purandara Bhavana, Indira Nagar, Feb 10th

Hari narayana - kedaram
sri muladhara - sri - MD
muddumomu - suryakantam ( R,S )
saraswati namostute - saraswati - GNB
mathe malayadhwaja (daru) - khamas - ( R )
chakkani raja - kharaharapriya - ( R,N,S,T )
venkatAchala nilaya - sindhu bhairavi ( R)
mangalam - saurashtram

Superlative performance; what grandeur, what classicism! The man has a regal stage presence and the bowing oozed nectar in each stroke. Outstanding Kh'priya and Khamas. Well worth my weekend trip to the garden city. Congrats to Carnatica for bringing him to Bangalore.

-------------------------------------

RK Srikantan, RS Ramakanth, GJR Krishnan, Trichy Sankaran, Giridhar Udupa
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, feb 9th, 5 pm

(Partial list... I may be missing some pieces)

mahaganapatim - nattai
deva deva kalayamite - mmgowla
shyama sundaranga - dhanyasi (r,n,s)
aparadha mulanorva - rasali
manasu swadheena - shankarabharanam (r,n,s,t)
Dasar pada - ??
Another piece I dont recollect now
Mangalam Kosalendraya - Madhyamavati

The 87 yr old veteran puts us youngsters to shame with his zest and vigour. Flying in from Trivandrum after a 5-hr performance at an award function the previous day, RKS presented a thrilling concert. I bow my head with all respect! The team was one reason I went to the concert: Trichy Sankaran was outstanding; GJR was in an accompanying role after a long time, but I was rather underwhelmed... nothing outstanding. A peeve I have with Ramakanth is that he tends to put in a distracting hum in the name of helping RKS with sruti alignment. It gets quite annoying after a while. RKS by himself has superb fidelity to sruti even at this age and doesnt need scraps of paper to remember lyrics. But these are minor irritants, given the enduring music from the veteran!

[rasaali]

Good to hear about a VVS Sir's performance after a longish gap. He is a great maestro.

Interesting that he played the Daru varnam in the middle of the concert.
Muddu momu is yet another rare gem.

Lucky are the audiences that heard him!

[mahavishnu]

nice to see GJR in an accompanying role. only time we've seen this since the time he played with tanjavur sankara iyer a few months ago.