Pliant strings
MANJARI SINHA
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Neelranjan Mukherjee gave a fine recital on the guitar, but he should remember there is such a thing as a surfeit of sweetness.
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Chord and notes Neelranjan Mukherjee.
In an evening of Hindustani classical instrumental music, the Epicentre presented a guitar recital of Neelranjan Mukherjee. A talented disciple of Pandit Debu Chaudhuri, Neelranjan chose to play the timely raga Maru Bihag and maintained a constant tunefulness, with a very few notes fractionally missing their mark. Preceded by an introductory alap, jod, jhala, there was a vilambit gat (slow composition) in the nine-beat cycle of Matta tala followed by the famous bandish “Jaagoon main sari rain…” set to Teen tala, composed and popularised by Prabha Atre.
The meend or tonal glide is easy to execute on the guitar and is in the very nature of the instrument, but Neelranjan should understand that too much of meend at every turn brings ennui. His skipping the antara was also very conspicuous. Apart from the usual gamak ki taan, commonly played on the guitar, Neelranjan also impressed with his “dir dir ka kaam” which is a technicality of the sitar and the sarod. With a pair of tabla players in Sovan Hazra and Jagannath Roy on either side, Neelranjan had plenty of time to rest in between, by just keeping a refrain of lehra while the accompanying tabla players showed their prowess. He concluded with a melodious dhun in raga Pilu set to Dadra tala.
No doubt the Epicentre, with an air conditioned hall and other facilities, has fulfilled a long felt need for a thriving cultural space in Gurgaon, but with no feedback speakers on the stage, there is a constant problem with the volume for the performing artists, who can’t even hear themselves, leave aside the accompanying instruments. To make the auditorium music friendly, this drawback needs to be attended to urgently.
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