CHENNAI: Senior vocalist Subhashini Parthasarathy is gifted with an in-depth intuition of musical phrases. Her performances only reflect the excellence of carnatic music, which is delivered by her in her own chaste style.
Bringing out aesthetic qualities and integrating them into the texture of the compositions has always been the hallmark of the artiste.
Her concert for the Sri Meenakshi Sundararajan fine arts that was performed recently, brought out the lustre of carnatic music of an earlier era. Beginning with the Neranammi varnam, a composition by the late singer-cum-composer Ramnad Srinivasa Iyengar, she moved on to sing Siva Siva (panthuvarali), a composition by saint Thyagaraja. And when she rendered Rama Badra Ra Ra (ananda bhairavi), composed by saint Bhadrachala Ramadoss, we realised that she is one original artistes who stands for the traditional values of Carnatic Panthathi.
Subhashmi’s competence in handling kriti passages, in both the octaves, made the listening experience a great pleasure indeed. Cowming back to the performance, Thyagaraja’s composition Kalikiyunde (Keeravani), rendered by Subhashmi with scintillating swara passages, revealed her capacity to deliver it with a natural flair and unhurried expression. When she brought out the salient characteristics of the raga, it was evident that the vocalist relied on fast tempo and the principles of vishranthi.
Pakala Ramdas (violin) made good effort to complement the singer, with Arun Prakash (mridangam) and Chandrasekara Sarma (ghatam) unfolding the laya exposition.