India’s celebrated Carnatic concert vocalists “RaGa sisters”, Ranjani and Gayatri, captivated a packed audience of Indian music lovers in Doha last Friday with their mesmerizing performance.
They delivered a scintillating performance to the Music Lovers of Doha at Al Falak Hall in Crowne Plaza Hotel.
The duo started off with a nice varnam in raag “Kalyani” (meaning auspicious), then picked up pace and kept the audience enthralled with a purandaradasar kriti on “malaya marutham” raag.
A very brief kalpanaswarams painted this beautiful raga where rare kritis are found. This was followed by an evergreen composition of Muthuswami Dikshitar, “Rangapura Vihara” on raag “Brindavana Saranga” which used to be a master piece of legendary singer the late Dr M S Subhalakshmi.
Their next rendition Ninne Nere Nammi, a thiagaraja kirti on raag “Pantuvarali” captivated the audience. Gayatri explained the Nandanar charitram and sang “ Vazhi Maraiththu Irukkudhe: in “Nattakkurinji” raag where the Uchcha sthayi (high Octave) of Gayathri and the Mandara Sthayi (Lower Octave) of Ranjani was a perfect blend.
This was followed by an elaborate alapanai and the mood was set for Thodi raag, and the song selected was “Thanigai Valar Sharavanabhava” a kirti of Papanasham Shivam. The fast paced brigha laden “Vara Raga Laya” in Chenchu Khamboji by Thiagaraja was next and was delivered nearly to perfection, before the duo went on to render their main raag for the evening “Abheri” and sang one of the most popular kritis “Nagumomu”.
The audience were thrilled to listen to Nagumomu and also to the outstanding performance by the accompanying artists Rajeev Mukundan on Violin, Manoj Siva on Mirdangam and Anirudh Athreya on Kanjira.
Gopal Balasubramaniam, who heads the Music Lovers Group, said:”It was a wholesome concert packed with pathos, compassion, devotion and peace with a perfect order of various raags, and said it was truly a memorable evening for all the music lovers of Doha with a fully sold out house for the first time in the history of MLG.”
The Peninsula
