Ranjani Gayathri November 2012

Sometimes the accompanists take the concert to the next level outside the Vocalist's performance. It was evident yesterday when K Arun Prakash, who read the situation quickly that it will be a capsule 2 hour concert, wherein he will not have much time to showcase his class in Tani, set the tone of brilliance right from the first krithi with a lovely laya nadham and played excellent nadai's for each of the krithis. The best he reserved for Muthuswami Dikshithar's one of the masterpiece in Nayaki, Sri Ranga Nayakam. He was well supported by N Guru Prasad on Ghatam who was also equally impressive. "Pattamma ennama Paaduvaa" my mom's comment while Ranjani & Gayathri sang this and she shared the relative anecdote of this krithi and Srirangam etc. Nostalgic. This is one advantage of attending concerts with my mother. The other interesting thing being the moment the alapana starts she will spring up the raga name and could guess minimum 3 to 4 probable krithis to follow in that. Yesterday Gayathri did a brief alapana on Shubapantuvarali, mother told me it may be "Ennalu Yoorake" of Swamigal or "Sri Sathyanarayanam Upasmahe". But to her delight they sung Super Star and her favorites GNB's "Ni samanavevaru". H N Bhaskar on Violin was quiet all now and showed his brilliance and got his pound of flesh in Mohanam alapana which was the main piece (Evarura Ninu Vina). Yamuna Kalyani (Hari smaraney mado nirantara), Poornachandrika (Ramachandra pahi), Jhinjhoti Abhang were the other renderings from the duo. They ended the concert with a lovely Sri raga Mangala kriti from Navaratna krithis of Dikshithar (Sri Kamalambige).

This performance is seriously a better one from them comparing the one I heard in January here in Chowdiah and the one during last December season 2011 @ Narada Gana Sabha.