Reviews
Monsoon Mood in Kolkata - Malhar Festival

A packed Vivekananda Hall welcomed sarod maestro Ashish Khan, an
NRI, who came down to script the grand finale of the Malhar Festival organised
by the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture on 12 August 2023.
We live in an era of technical brilliance wherein every
classical artist is almost predictable. The unpredictability of the maestros of
the golden era is passé, but Khan carries the traits of his legendary
grandfather, Baba Alauddin Khan, and that is perhaps his winning or losing
point. Unfortunately, the successor of Maihar gharana was in his ‘off’ mood and
could not do justice to his gharana’s unique method of treating raga Des as
Des-Malhar by applying deviated Komal Gandhar (ga ma ri sa) as the closing phrase
of each melodic statement. This brought it too close to Jaijaiwanti, his next
choice. Atish Mukherjee accompanied his octogenarian ustad with commendable
sensitivity, and Sabir Khan on the tabla (Farukhabad gharana), tried his best
to break the monotony by offering brilliant jawabi and saat sangat.
However, the festival commenced with a unique and brilliant jugalbandi in raga Megh featuring Arshad
Ali Khan (vocal) and Sandeep Chatterjee (santoor). Inevitably, in the alap
segment, the powerful and dexterous voice overpowered the delicate instrument
bereft of meend, gamak-like essential adornments of Indian music. But Sandeep
amiably assisted Arshad in portraying the heavy movements of rain-bearing
clouds by adding pleasant melodic phrases akin to the rain droplets. Santoor
came to the fore in the jod segment with rhythmic patterns and bol-based
cascading taans. Arshad took to sargams very wisely, and both concluded with
fast taans. Supported by the well-known Tanmay Bose on the tabla, their
gatkaris in medium-paced jhaptal and fast Teen taal took a delighting shape
with multiple designs of taans that were punctuated by Arshad’s emotive
standing notes and meend-laden note-combinations. Sandeep’s aesthetical volume
variations at the high speed of another composition set to Ek taal completed
the raga’s portrait.