Ela Palimpa Jalamu - Kambhoji - Restored from a vintage concert - Dr. M Balamuralikrishna (1964)

Music for Posterity : Sreenivasa Murthy
Music for Posterity : Sreenivasa Murthy
6.6 هزار بار بازدید - 7 سال پیش - Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna and M S
Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna and M S Gopalakrishnan together have created and presented many masterpieces over the several hundreds of concerts they performed. Experimenting with music all his life, Balamuralikrishna once mentioned that “We have travelled together so much in music, while travelling for the music concerts and, I like MSG’s style of accompaniment very much. His spontaneity would inspire me while on the stage. I always see him as an extension of the violin itself”. The BMK-MSG era slated as the “golden times” in Carnatic music might have witnessed some of the best music concerts that ever occurred.

Unfortunately, most of the recordings from these concerts are unavailable today and have disappeared in the sands of time. But, the only few handful of concert recordings that are available today, provide us some samples about  the quality of music that they created together and the grandeur of music which was celebrated by them.

One such concert was in 1956. The recording has not been available, but the record of the concert has been captured in an article by Sri Palagummi Vishwanatham..

“It was the festive day of 1st November 1956 in Hyderabad. The celebration was extensive in the Exhibition grounds. A huge stage waited to be decorated by the top-class artistes. All the artistes and performers showed new enthusiasm and interest in the event, like it was their own household’s festivities. The programme commenced with the concert of Dwaram Venkataswami Naidu.

The music which emerged from the artiste, filled the ambience like fragrance. The audience was spellbound. Everyone wondered could anyone raise the spirit of the audience like Naidu gāru did?

The next artiste to decorate the stage was BMK. Till his ascension onto the stage he was a friend, who spoke everything and nothing, he was a part of the mesmerised audience. When he ascended the stage, with no what-so-ever fear, with comfort, with familiarity, with his disarming smile, he was a different phenomenon altogether. The off-stage BMK and the on-stage BMK are two different people. BMK began his concert with Révati rāga. The audience who were mesmerised with fragrance were now awed by the beauty shown by BMK of Révati rāga. They just shifted from one form of stupor to the other! Music of high quality has that power.

It would be folly to discuss whose music was greater. For one, his music was his temple, for the other, it was his playground. The world of rasikās salutes to both alike.”

In my quest for BMK-MSG concerts and an endeavour to restore them, I have been finding multiple copies of the same concert and these copies hold the key to get a better audio quality. Each copy of the recording will normally have something better than the other version and using these “good quality aspects” the vintage concerts are reconstructed.

Restoration of BMK-MSG concerts create a special interest for me and once in every two or three years, I would revisit these concerts in pursuit of continuous improvement. Here, is one such attempt of reconstruction of an excerpt from a 1964 live concert.

The completeness of presentation in this piece, though an excerpt from a full concert, gives the listener an effect of listening to a full concert.

Let’s listen to enjoy the music, learn something new, and discuss our reflections with others. Finally, let us curate a succinct, lucid, and powerful narrative that we share with the younger generations for their benefit.
7 سال پیش در تاریخ 1396/02/25 منتشر شده است.
6,641 بـار بازدید شده
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