CHENNAI: Vocalist Subhasri Ramachandran may be a budding artiste, but she captivated the audience at her concert at Srinivasa Sastri Hall for Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer Trust, recently. The generic quality of layam, which is obviously expected out of a young artiste, flowed with ease.
Subhasri began with Gajavadana (hamsadhwani), composed by saint Purandaradasa and went on to deliver the Nagagandhari kiritana in the same raga, a composition by saint Muthuswami Dikshitar. With both these songs, Subhasri revealed her ability to render Carnatic numbers with a good grip of the contours of ragas.
Aparadhamula, a lathangi raga alapana, composed by late singer-cum-composer Patnam Subramania Iyer, was rendered with an emphasis on melodic contours.
The performance was indeed appreciable, and also divulged the bhava aspects of the kriti. It is to be mentioned that the famous composition Samaganolola (Hindolam) by her father’s mentor G N Balasubramanian, was presented with commendable clarity.
The ending pieces of the song Om Namo Narayana, which is a composition by Ambujam Krishna was rendered in raga Karnaranjai. Needless to mention that she has a good voice, and while rendering she is capable of negotiating different sancharas in both octaves, thereby revealing her propensity to captivate the audience.
With perfect sruti alignment, she proved that she was technically competent to handle the madhyamakala and duridha kala passages in kritis.
With constant practice she will prove to be a competent successor to the GNB style of music, following in the footsteps of her father Trichur Ramachandran. No doubt, Subhasri displayed a mature bhava in her renderings. Being a young singer, she does have a deep understanding of the lofty principals and aims of chaste carnatic music.
Meera Sivaramakrishnan (violin) is certainly a competent accompanist and undoubtedly Kallidaikurichi S Siva Kumar (mridangam) and H Sivaramakrishnan (ghatam) embellished the recital with their crisp rhythmic cadences.