Vasundhara Rajagopal at the Sree Poornathrayeesa temple.

A disciple of T.R. Subrahmaniam, Vasundhara Rajagopal gave an admirable performance on the 3rd day of the Poornathrayesha temple festival. A rich and gamaka-laden voice made the ragas endearing and the intonation of the compositions had a natural chime in them. After a comprehensive etching of Mayamalaava gaula and Deva deva decorated with kalpanasweras, she came up with a delicious Keeravani.. The pallavi wound around Kanada, Revathi. and Dharmavathy. H.N. Bhaskar was noticeable with the bow with a trace of MSG, his guru, in him. Nellai Balaji and Rajagopalan gave an exemplary rhythm with the mridangam. and ghanjira respetively. On the Aarattu day there was high excitement, owing to the violin solo by L.Subrahmaniam who was performing for the first time at the main temple in his home town. Promoted by Palakkad Mani Iyer he learnt early in his life the way to mesmerise the audience with a refined technique, remaining on the basics he learned from his father, Lakshminarayanan. The miniscule variations brought in Vathapi incorporating the occidental techniques such asVibrato (shaking of the same note), Glissando (wide sweeps) and Legato(upward and downward movements of the fingers) and a downpour of swaras in Niravadhi in Ravichandrika by Tyagaraja attracted a prolonged applause. Mridangam patriarch T.K. Moorhty’ s prowess on the mridangam would have brought immense pleasure to his guru, Thanjavur Vaidyanataha Iyer, had he been present on such a serene occasion. The protracted “korvais” he presented during the ‘Thani’ were well deciphered and reproduced by Tripunithura Radhakrishnan with the ghatom.

By Courtesy The Hindu Kochi.-Dec24.2004.