Mixed offerings by Aditya Madhavan and Sunil Gargyan

While their training and talent helped these two young musicians, in places they appeared to have bitten off more than they could chew

Aditya Madhavan chose Mayamalavagowla, a Melakarta raga, as the centrepiece of his concert. Nadanamakriya is derived from it, a raga with which Sunil Gargyan had begun his concert the previous evening. So, the latter’s ‘Intha paraka’ was far shorter compared to Aditya’s ‘Meru samana’. The concerts of these two youngsters, who belong to schools with similar musical traits, revealed the rich variety Carnatic music has on offer.

Much before scaling the upper register of the Mayamalavagowla alapana, Aditya generated phrases dunked in delectable nasality, an unmistakable sign of his heritage, passed down from Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer’s disciple, Radha Namboodiri, Aditya’s guru during his formative Mumbai years. The Tyagaraja kriti followed conventional aesthetics even as some new-age ornamentations were obviously an influence of Sanjay Subrahmanyan, under whom the 25-year-old is now training. Sunil, a few months older than Aditya, has a robust voice. His ability for modulations came clear in softer treatment around, say, ‘Kanna talli’, as the gateway to the charanam of the opening item. Into the swaraprastara, his end-rally emphasis on the ‘pa’ had particular proximity to the enunciation of that note by Semmangudi, the guru of Sunil’s mentor P.S. Narayanaswamy.