The evening belonged to Priya

Veteran vocalists, Shanmukhapriya and Haripriya, are known for their rich manodharma. Their capacity to innovate, which more than compensates for their light voice, was evident in the excellent Rishabhapriya.

At Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s December music festival 2022, Shanmukhapriya began the alapana and let Haripriya continue it and together the Priya Sisters produced a thoroughly enjoyable Rishabhapriya. It is rather a surprise, and perhaps a pity too, that Rishabhapriya is less popular than its cousins, Charukesi and Lathangi – the raga deserves better attention; Priya Sisters ought to be complimented over their choice of the raga. The vocalists were accompanied on the violin by another veteran, M.A. Krishnaswamy, whose exposition of Rishabhapriya came out in a slow, note-by-note manner. Those who follow Priya Sisters know the singers’ penchant for D.K. Pattammal’s composition, ‘Panniru Kaiyane’, would have guessed, the vocalists took up that composition and sang it beautifully, with a long tail of swaras at the end.

Whether the preponderance of ‘priya’ in the concerts was by accident or design is a matter of speculation, but Rishabhapriya was followed by Karaharapriya. Haripriya sang most of the alapana, pretty neat and presently came Papanasam Sivan’s beautiful composition, ‘Janakipathe jaya karunya jaladhe’. As expected, niraval and swaras came at ‘Sakala mahidendra’. Overall, it was a pleasing offering to the audience. But if just to pick nits, one should point to a bad split of words, which resulted in the word ‘aganita’ (in dasaratha tanayaaganita guna-gana) missing the ‘a’ and sounding as ‘ganita’, which is the exact opposite what the composer intended to say. Vocalists must pay attention to these little aspects too.

Early in the concert, Priya Sisters sang Tyagaraja’s ‘Darini Telusukonti’ (Suddha Saveri), tailing it with a bouquet of brilliant swaras. ‘Chede Buddhimanura (Tyagaraja, Atana) and ‘Sada Chaleswaram’ (Dikshitar, Bhupalam), were the other notable elements of the concert.

Sai Giridhar (mridangam) and B.S. Purushotham (kanjira) gave percussive support and played a nice thani. Purushotham’s multi-cycle gumkis were worthy of note.