My Chennai Diary - Day2 Part3 and Day-3

As we waited outside to reserve good seats for the Sanjay concert, the salesperson at Charsur Digital Works stall whom I had met at Bangalore more than an year back recognized me and told me to avail of their offer of obtaining the full set of their CDs on an Ipod for Rs. 37500 (I had purchased a few Paddhathi CDs last year at Koramangala from this person and I cribbed about their not giving enough discounts this time at the same venue despite being a regular purchaser of their CDs. They have a good collection but their CDs are over-priced.)

Spotted a MAmi who looked exactly like Smt. Vedavalli in the audience. Vinod nicknamed her Bhedavalli - the graha Bheda version of Vedavalli :-) and we had a hearty laugh.

Sanjay Subrahmanyan began his concert at 6.30 to a packed audience. He was accompanied by Nagai Muralidharan (Violin) , Guruvayur Dorai (Mridangam) and E.M. Subramaniam (Ghatam)

1.) Maguva - Ata tala Varnam in Narayanagowla
2.) Kamalamba Bhajare - Ananda Bhairavi, Dikshithar , Rupakam
3.) Bilahari - Good alapanai. The Sanjay / Nagai combination has always been good. Kanukoti Nee , St. Thyagaraja, Adi
4.) Karaharapriya - Exquisite alapana portraying different nuances of this grand Raga. Sendhil Andavan - Papanasam Sivan - Rupakam
5.) Pranatarthi hara - MelaKarta Ragamalika chakram by MahA VaidyanathA Iyer which commences with an invocation to Lord Ganesha in Sri Ragam. Sanjay sang the first two Chakrams - Indu (KanakAngi, RatnAngi, Ganamuthy, Vanaspati, MAnavati, TAnarupi) and Netra (SenApati, Hanumat Thodi, DhenukA, NAtakapriyA, KokilapriyA and Rupavati) . Trust Sanjay to renew old traditions.Stalwarts like Musiri and Mudikondan used to sing this song in public performances. (SSI knew it and taught it to MS though he never sang it himself in any of his kucheris.) A commercial recording of the same by MS is available. MS used to sing 2 chakrams of this song every year at her Music Academy concerts. I hope that Sanjay does that too.

We left the venue while DharmAvati was in progress as it was pretty late by then.

Couldn't attend too many concerts on the third day. We went shopping at T. Nagar in the morning and by the time we were through, it was late afternoon.

Today the venue was NArada Gana Sabha and the artistes were Hyderabad Brothers - D. Seshachari & D. Raghavachari . They were accompanied by Mysore Manjunath (Violin), KAraikudi Mani (Mridangam) and V. Suresh (Ghatam).
1.) NavarAgamAlika Varnam - Valachi Vachi
2.) Dhenuka - Teliyaledu Rama - St. Thyararaja, Adi
3.) Sriranjani- Brocheva Ravare Rama - St. Thyararaja, Rupakam. Good rendition with fast paced swarams
4.) RanganAtuDE - SowrAshTram, Ponniah PiLLai , Rupakam
5.) Dharmavati - detailed Alapana by both brothers. Parandhamavati -Dikshithar
6.) Thodi - Hyderabad brothers excel in singng Thodi and every time their portrayal of this Raga is different. Mysore Manjunath played a brilliant Alapanai too. They sang DAsharathe b St. Thyagaraja in Adi talam. Karaikudi's Tani was excellent as always
7.) Idi samayamura - Saindhavi ? St. T
8.) Padam in Atana
9.) Bhajan in Dhanyasi
10.) Ashtapadi - GAyati Vanamali by Jayadeva - Yaman Kalyani
11.) Mangalam

This concert was so good that we decided to listen to them again at Parthasarathy Sabha the next day. (I like their clear pronunciation of SAhitya and the way their voices blend into each other's.)

Also shopped for plenty of cassettes and CDs at the AVM showroom a few buildings away. Was elated as I managed to get 2 CDs which I had been hunting for since a while - volumes 1 and 4 of AbhyAsagAnam, a set of Varnams by Dr. R. Vedavalli.

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