HYDERABAD: It was an unusual and interesting offering to music lovers this weekend as the entire concert was dedicated to the compositions of Walajapet Venkatarama Bhagavathar. Presented by the students of Carnatic musician Sreevidya J Raman, founder, Gayatri Arts Academy, the event was one of its kind in the city.
The concert was part of Gayatri Fine Arts’s 8th annual festival and Saint Thyagaraja’s 173rd Aradhana which was celebrated from January 24-26 at Kowtha Swarajya Vihar, Secunderabad. Another attraction of this festival is the Akhandam feature. Walajapet Venkataramana Bhagavathar was the direct and chief disciple of the great saint-composer Thyagaraja and also the chronicler of much of his guru’s work.
He was also a scholar and learned in Telugu, Sanskrit and Saurashtra languages. Moreover, he was a composer himself and left behind a substantial number of compositions. These include swarajathis, varnams of both kinds (thana and pada ) keerthanas and thillanas all with much musical merit.
The three-day music festival featured a vocal concert on his compositions by students of Sreevidya Janakiraman accompanied by B Janakiraman (violin), and K Ganapathiram (Mridangam).
A vocal recital by RV Panduranga Sharma (vocal) accompanied by K Rajan (violin) and G Ramachandran (Mridangam) was the highlight of day two. The last day was about akhandam, which literally means unbroken in Sanskrit.
The non-stop 12 hour programme by a large group of artists from 9 am to 9 pm had artistes from Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad and Kerala performing together. As the classical musicians B. Janakiraman and Sreevidya Raman, founders of Gayatri Fine Arts Academy put it: "We have been regularly conducting akhandam programmes for the past few years where many artists, both famous and upcoming ones take to the stage and perform Thyagaraja krithis for the audience. in an Akhandam, we see to it no lyrics are repeated thus offering a continuous fare of variety with quality."
Among these artistes were veterans such as Delhi Muthukumar, M. Vijayaganesh, Kolkata Padmavathi, Yamini Ramesh, B. Gururaghavendra, Srivatsan Santhanam, Pappu Gyandev, S Thyagarajan, Harikishore and TP Balasubramanian.