S R Janakiraman, Saraswathi Vaggeyakkara Trust

Prof S R Janakiraman - R K Shriramkumar - K R Ganesh

Saraswathi Vaggeyakkara Trust, NGS Mini hall. 19th Feb 2006

Concert of rare mElakartA and varga rAga kritis of tyAgarAja

bhUlOka nAradamuni - vandanadAriNi varNam - kaNDa tripuTa - SRJ (R)
muddu mOmu - suryakAntam - Adi(2) (R)
Ananda sAgara - garuDadvani - Adi (S)
kaLala nErcina - dIpakam - Adi (RS)
E rAmuni - vakuLAbaraNam - cApu (RS)
vAcAma gOcaramE - kaikavasi - Adi (RS)
manasA srI rAmuni - mAraranjani - Adi (R)
nI cittamu - vijaya vasantam - Adi (R)
Emi nEramu - sankarAbaraNam - Adi(2) (RNS)
TaniyAvardanam
'vyAsO naikama carcayA' - guru sthuthi slOkam by Walajapet Venkataramana bhagavatar on tyAgarAja sang in madhyamAvati.

Prof SRJ gave small explanations for each kriti. He also sang some part of the AlApanais as svaras so that people could understand the rAga svarUpam completely.

The opening varNam was just rendered in a fast tempo. muddu mOmu was rendered in a leisurely fashion with no hurry. The vilamba kAla rendition was more moving compared to the fast pace rendition one gets to hear otherwise. garuDadvani was good also.

dIpakam, a janya of kAmavardini, was elaborated in line with the opening line of the kriti and the kriti was well rendered with nice svarams. vakuLAbaraNam was elaborated distinctly showing the kaisiki nishada which differentiates it from the mighty mAyAmALavagauLA. Kaikavasi was rendered well with just one really long svaram in mEl kAlam

On similar lines as vakuLAbaraNam, mAraranjani was elaborated clearly differentiating it from cArukEsi and sarasAngi, the closely allied rAgams. vijaya vasantam, a janya of visvAmbari, was elaborated as well. Sri SRJ said, the popular visvambari version of this kriti is not correct.

sankarAbaraNam was elaborated with quite a few vintage sancarams and there were even some unheard off sancarams in the AlApanai. The flat usage of rishabam was quite amazing. Sri SRJ said that he picked the sancarams from the kriti 'Emi nEramu' itself and explained the usage of plain rishaba from the opening line of the kriti. He also recollected that the first time he heard this was by Semmangudi Narayanaswamy Iyer.

All the kritis were very well rendered and so were the manOdarma parts.

Sri Sriram who provided vocal support was very supportive through out the concert. The occasional AlApanais he did and the svarams he sang were quite promising. A guy to be watched in the future.

Sri Shriramkumar was just amazingly good in following the main artist. His playing in tune with what is presented was very good.

Sri Ganesh provided very sensible support to the concert and played a nice tani.