The best dedication to any teacher would be to take their lessons and see how you can take them further, said city-based pianist Anil Srinivasan, at a recent tribute concert on Teacher’s Day at the Apparao Galleries. True to those words, he played a number of pieces that he learnt as a young musician, but not without his own magical twist to the original composition.
Taking a Dhanasri thillana by Lalgudi Jayaraman, Srinivasan added 11 ragas to the classical violinist’s work to make it a more contemporary sound, but without tampering it with too much in a way that it loses its authentic beauty.
Anyone who’s tried to learn to play the piano will know that for the first few years, all you get to do is practise your scales. The experimental musician that he is, Srinivasan took some of the basic scale exercises to make an exciting piece out of them, as his fingers gracefully flew across the piano keys.
If you’ve been paying attention to the music circuit of the city, you’ll know that no Srinivasan concert is complete without a performance of Chinnanjiru Killiye.
Beautifully taking advantage of the piano’s ability to intersperse similar melodies, Srinivasan took Bharathiyar’s Ragamalika to a whole new level by combining various new ragas to the song.
Srinivasan’s rendition of Polish composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturne was an inspiring performance, serenading the audience with Chopin’s trademark romantic feel. Srinivasan’s version of eloquent Vande Mataram also requires a mention, for it instantly brought out a number of cell phone cameras as it was only be fair that the magic be captured.
A fitting end to the concert was a medley of all the audience requests. As melodically jarring as they were from one another, Srinivasan somehow found a way to make the best of Illayaraja, Beethoven and Tagore fit together in a single piece, as if they were all composed to be played after one another.
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