Aishwarya Vidhya Raghunath’s crisp concert

Since artistes outnumber the time slots during the Season, young musicians should plan and present their concerts keeping an eye on the clock. Aishwarya Vidhya Raghunath made the most of the one-hour concert with her precise execution.

A raga is a vast ocean and one needs to plumb the depths to unravel the nuances. But realising the time limitation, Aishwarya presented a smart precis of Sankarabharanam, touching upon the characteristic phrases of the raga. She concentrated on the sruti-based karvais in her initial passages and rounded off the alapana with fast rolling brigas in the second segment. In Tyagaraja’s ‘Emi neramu nannu brova’, the brief niraval on ‘Deenabanduvani devadevudani’ paved way for swarakalpana. With a few rounds of keezh kala swaras, she switched over to the mel kala exercise focusing on the note ‘ga’. The rounding off was done with neat extensions and combinations.

She managed to explore Dhanyasi, a heavy raga. Here again her musical acumen helped her present an essay without sacrificing the scope for involved rendition. ‘Meenalochana brova’ by Syama Sastri was rendered keeping intact the underlying melody. The niraval was on ‘Gama palini brova’ and just a few streaks of swaras were added.

Aishwarya flagged off her concert with Subbaraya Sastri’s ‘Sankari neeve’ in Begada with shadjam-centered kalpanaswaras and ended her recital with ‘Sri Venkata gireesam’ in Surutti by Dikshitar. M. Vijay on the violin and K.H. Vineeth on the mridangam used their time assiduously. It is not mandatory to suffix every kriti with either swaras or raga essays to reinforce one’s competence. In fact, a dedicated rendition with alapana or swaras for just one or two kritis is enough to establish an artiste’s credentials.