Mohan santhAnam @sivagami petachi on Feb 08th,2009
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Accompanied by padmanAbhA - violin , arjun ganesh - mridangam
There is always two sides of the coin in taking too many rare krithis , one is the plus where more numbers are coming to the concerts , but the flip side is bit of too much unfamiliarity of numbers takes a definite quality hit .
To me mohan santhAnam , could have atleast interlaced few more familiar numbers of MD ,to give a more wholesome concert experience. The start was in natanarAyani, the rendition was quite ok , felt he could have added more weight there. The sowrAshtram and poornachandrikA were both good , liked the poornachandrikA a shade better (nice to hear than the often heard telisi rama of T).
The next gowlipaNtu was definitely different and had not much overlap with T's mosaboku, his rendition was probably authentic one .From there onwards the concert took a definite steep downhill.
Certainly this kAmbOdhi kamalAmbikAyai should be a definite difficult one for any musician . To me mOhan could have possibly gone to a little more expressive and more familiar kAmbOdhi like maragatha vaLLim, his rendition was not appealing . The next had a long alApana , Struggled a bit there to identify as to whether it was a madhyamAvati or devamanOhari ,still not sure . This rendition bhArati maddhisAnA had a lot of slips and quite a bit of voice problems ,his rendition was less than mediocre.
A very good alApana of hammeer came up, at last perhaps a most familiar MD krithi purahara nandana came out , his rendition was little too fast and with it the charm of hameerkalyAni got lost there. The accompanist were both good , liked arjun ganesh play a lot he had lot of strokes and I was told that he and the violinist was playing straight for 3 concerts from amritha venkatesh(whom I missed)and swarna rethas.
Overall a mediocre concert by mohan santhAnam.Too much of rare krithis in the same concert will hit the concert quality is always true as our carnatic krithis especially MD takes a long time to master and to bring it as concert worthy.
1. shree mahAgaNapathE pAlayasumAm - natanArAyani
2. varalakshmi bhaja rE - sowrAshtram
3. shankachakragadhA - poornachandrikA
4. krishnA nanda mukunda murAre -gowlipaNtu
5. kamalAmbikAyai - kAmbOdhi
6. bhArati maddhisAnA (R) - devamanOhari??
7. purahara naNdana (R)- hameekalyAni