South Indian Classical Music House Concert with M. D. Ramanathan, vocalist, T. N. Krishnan, violin, Umayalpuram Sivaraman, mridangam, and: At Home with Master Musicians of Madras, Volume I, T. N. Krishnan (review)

This pair of releases from Apsara Media for Intercultural Education compels careful attention for several reasons. First, it is difficult to overstate the extent to which filmmakers Amy Catlin and Fredric Lieberman have placed us in their debt by documenting and making available to the public performances by some of the greatest South Indian Karnatak musicians of the twentieth century, two of whom—vocalist M.D. Ramanathan and drummer Palghat T. S. Mani Iyer—are no longer with us. In addition, on the At Home with Master Musicians video the viewer is given a rare intimate look at musical transmission, in the family of violinist T.N. Krishnan. Both videos are based upon concert and supplementary recordings made in 1977. Since hardly any videos of performances from before 2000 are commercially available, all lovers of Karnatak music will want these now historic performances in their collection. Due to the quality of the performances and, in the At Home with Master Musicians tape, the explanation of basic musical concepts in clear and direct terms (augmented by on-screen captioning of Indian-language words), teachers will also find these to be invaluable resources in introducing students to the music of India.

The South Indian Classical Music House Concert video tape contains seven compositions performed by the trio of M.D. Ramanathan, voice; T.N. Krishnan, violin; and Umayalpuram Sivaraman, mridangam (double-headed drum). The recording follows the typical progression of a Karnatak music concert, albeit truncated from the normal concert length of two-plus hours to a set of sixty minutes. The performance begins with a varnam, followed by several kritis in succession (one of which, "Rama Katha Sudha," contains a brief tani avartanam, drum solo), and ends with a tillana. The program chosen by Ramanathan represents a good selection of ragas and composers, including kritis by all three of South India's famous "Trinity": Tyagaraja (1767–1847), Muttuswami Dikshitar (1776–1835), and Syama Sastri (1767–1827). These are framed by the outstanding nava raga malika (garland of nine ragas) varnam by the late nineteenth-century composer/vocalist Patnam Subramania Iyer that opens the set, and the ending tillana, a composition by the vocalist Ramanathan himself.

The concert was presented before a small audience in the garden of a gracious home in the Adayar district of Chennai. The intimate listening environment is complemented by the soft sounds of birds and by the camera periodically panning the musicians, the many trees, and South Indian stone and bronze sculptures that adorn the garden. Ramanathan's warm and unusually deep baritone voice is radiant throughout the set and is heard to especially striking effect on the alapana (unmetered melodic improvisation) leading into the second piece, Muttuswami Dikshitar's "Budhamasrayami." The accompaniment given by violinist Krishnan and mridangist Sivaraman is tasteful and restrained throughout; Krishnan's violin alapanas and Sivaraman's all-too brief drum solo are models of their genres and contribute greatly to the performance.

At Home with Master Musicians of Madras is really a combination of two separate programs: an intimate half hour spent with a musical family and a forty-minute concert segment, the whole knit together by the presence of violinist T.N. Krishnan. The video begins with views of the city of Chennai and quickly moves (as the on-screen caption says) "from public spaces to private...