When maestros took over

Carnatic music lovers were treated to a weekend of classical music by some of the best musicians in the field. Ganjam’s ‘Flights of Fantasy’, that was held over the weekend, at Chowdiah Memorial hall ran into packed house

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The three-day music festival featured concerts by Malladi brothers, Ranjani-Gayatri and Sanjay Subrahmanyan. What came through and through during each of the concerts was the mastery that each of the performers had over their craft.
 
The festival began with a thrilling evening by Malladi Ravikumar and Malladi Sreeramprasad. Choosing ‘Bhairavi’ and ‘Ramamanohari’ as their main ‘raagas’, they rendered innovative ‘aalapanas’ to the Bengaluru audience and interspersed it with lilting ‘thillanas’. “We mainly choose our songs based on intuition and requests from those in the audience,” said Malladi Sreeramprasad.

The second day had a brilliant concert by Ranjani-Gayatri, the sisters are known to coordinate their music with their attire. They mesmerised the audience by rendering the main piece in ‘Bhairavi’. The seamless merge between the two seasoned singers, be it during the ‘aalapana’ or the ‘swara’ calculation, made for a wonderful evening.

 The audience comprised a lot of youngsters with a deep interest in Carnatic music. Ranjani described this a positive trend. She hoped that youngsters would work hard and take forward compositions by popular Carnatic musicians. Malladi Sreeramprasad also hopes youngsters would concentrate on ‘sahityams’ or the lyrical aspect of a song.

Speaking about ‘riyaaz’ with her sister, Ranjani explained, “I have been singing with Gayatri for a long time now, I know how she is going to take a ‘raga’ forward and where she is going to experiment with an ‘alaap’. A perfect collaboration can come only after years of experience.” 

The festival concluded with a solo performance by Sanjay who rendered the soothing ‘Kalyani raga’ to perfection. The highlight of his concert was the ‘raagam, thaanam and pallavi’ in ‘Kalyanavasantham.’

As much as the crowd loved their music, the singers too loved the audience in Bengaluru and hope to come back and perform again. Sreeramprasad added, “The audience, in the City, is like family. It’s like coming back home and performing.”

With the December music season not very far away, musicians have a hectic month scheduled and Ranjani and Gayatri are looking forward to their performances. Ranjani said, “We hope to try new compositions, ‘raagas’ and ‘thillanas’ which we haven’t attempted in the previous festivals.” Malladi Sreeramprasad concluded, “Old ‘raagas’ will be presented with freshness.”