Violinist Lalgudi GJR Krishnan glowered at the sound engineers’ cabin when the microphone let out a jarring screech soon after he began a Thodi alapana. Chances are it distracted him a lot, because the Thodi, built almost entirely of short and clipped phrases, remained inchoate till the end of the essay.
This patchiness contrasted sharply with his later presentation, a superb Rasikapriya, where the phrases were longer and more karvai-based, making the listening experience much more enjoyable. With the exception of that Thodi, Krishnan’s play through the concert was very becoming of a ‘Lalgudi’ scion. In fact, in the Kalyana Vasantham filler, Thyagaraja’s ‘Nadaloludai’, you could almost hear the words from his violin.
While the Thodi (Syama Sastri’s’ Ninne Namminanu’), nourished by the velvety strokes of mridangam maestro Trichy Sankaran, was the main piece, the highlight was the Rasikapriya RTP. This raga of two vivadi notes requires careful handling. Krishnan played it with ease and would have, no doubt, gone on full steam had it not been for the clock. The tanam and the pallavi set to kanda jati triputa talam were too brief, as were the forays into multi-raga swaras, illustrating the perils of the two-hour kutcheri format.
Earlier, Krishnan’s sibling, Lalgudi Vijayalakshmi, played a long, leisurely Madhyamavati , after which the two violinists took up Thyagaraja’s ‘Evarinchirira’, Dikshitar’s ‘Panchamatanga mukha’ in Malahari, and Ponnayya Pillai’s ‘Amba Nilambari’ in the eponymous raga. The sister seemed to have an edge over the brother in some segments.
Mridangist Sankaran and ganjira artist K.V. Gopalakrishnan played softly through the concert, but when their turn came, they produced an effervescent thani, with Sankaran’s metallic chapu sounds dominating the show.
