Melodious music

The 50-years-old Shankar Lal Music Festival occupies a place of pride among the music events held in the country. This year, both the established and the young artistes, including Kala Ram Nath, Rajshekhar Mansur, Hari Prasad Chourasia, Prateek Choudhury, Shati Sharma, Shiv Kumar Sharma, Manjari Asnare, Biswajeet Roy Choudhury and Pandit Jasraj, performed at the festival.

The festival opened with a violin recital by Kala Ram Nath, who has trained under Dr N Rajan. He also learnt the Khayal style of Hindustani music from Pt Jasraj. She began with Puriya Dhanashree and skillfully explored the raga8217;s immense tonal range. She was followed by a Khayal singer of Hindustani music, Rajshekhar Mansur, who started with raga Suddh Kalayan.

But he failed to impress because of his lackluster rendition of the raga. He moved the audience with melodic rendition of raga Sorad, though. The flute wizard Hari Prasad Chaursia presented raga Kausik Kanhra in Darbari and Malkuns ang. He exhibited a graceful and perfect technique through alaapkari and todas. His treatment of raga and use of the swara created a controversy with some purists charging him with deploying gimmicks, though.

The second day of the concert opened with a sitar recital by Prateek Choudhry in raga Puriya Kalyan. Choudhry8217;s recital was a pleasing treatment of the raga.