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A wholesome package
BY and large an audience would rather take a wholesome recital rendered modestly than one with abundant flamboyance and disappointing delivery. Latha Ramchand's vocal concert for Hamsadhwani, recently, was marked by a uniform level of propriety, sensitivity and commitment, through the 90 minutes it lasted. Imperfection, discordance and hesitation were not seen even fleetingly nor was there the slightest ostentation. It was apparent that the artiste intended only that, beginning from the pleasant varnam in Todi/Adi in 2 kaalams; the restrained kalpanaswaras in `Sarasiruha-aasanapriye,' `Parantaamavati' in Dharmavati, and indeed in the total of seven numbers concluding with the Srikrishna-Leela-Tarangini, `Kalyana-Gopalam.' There was musical maturity in the alapanas and swaras along with mastery of rhythm in the latter.
T. K. Padmanabhan and Kalakkad Srinivasan on the violin and mridangam blended with the mood and style of the singer.
Unusual presentation
The second essay of the evening, `Navanangaiyarin isai kolam,' was a striking contrast, as far as the presentation went, including the speech introducing the theme and those behind the production. The idea, conceived by K. Y. R. Appadurai, is not unusual; and individuality in such essays is to be looked for only in the production and the manner of development. The nine young women in rich brocade and the four young men in immaculate attire, mostly white — Saranya Krishnan, Rithu Rajendran, Amritha Murali, B. Sankari, Vasumathy Desikan, Nisha Rajagopal, S. Ramya, K. Gayatri, Kanchan Chandran; G. S. Krishna, B. Sundarkumar (mridangam), R. Satish Kumar (violin) and Madurai N. Anantanarayanan (veena) — lent a truly colourful festival character to the newly-built generous stage of Hamsadhwani, commanding a substantial audience. The singers took turns at rendering `alapana' and `kriti', singing `kalpana-swaras' in succession, while some songs were rendered in unison without preamble. The violin and the veena alternated in alapana. The overall effect justified the title.In its entirety, however, the programme left the listener without a sense of complete satisfaction vis-à-vis expectation. The reasons for this could be more than one. Squeezing an unwieldy number of items of classical weight into one evening's programme was one. It was not conducive to sustaining audience interest. Despite the conscious restraint exercised in each item, attention flagged. Heterogeneity in imaginativeness or training (or both), while singing solo was another. One more instance where the testing demand made by co-ordination was not met was Shyama Sastri's `kriti' `Amba Kamakshi' in Bhairavi. This piece starts in the `Annumantara Panchama' and lingers mostly in that range, and thus challenges the singers' capacity for continual boss `sanchaara'. Some in the group had to resort to the higher `sthaayi,' besides diluting the solemn and majestic ethos of the kriti, there was also some lack of consonance, and the combined effect failed to appeal. A large number, in itself, can add to existing complication. In meeting the demand for microphones of uniform quality for all the 13 artistes, the sound system failed badly. Added to it was the distracting strutting of the technicians across the stage, with their leads and cables.
P. S. KRISHNAMURTI
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