Accompanied by: TBD
Venue: The Kennedy Center, Washington, DC
Date: Sunday, March 13, 2011
The Kennedy Center in Washington DC presented a Hindustani concert yesterday by Utsav Lal, known as the “Raga Pianist”. This was only my second Hindustani concert, the first one being a couple of days before that. Not being very familiar with Hindustani music, I find it hard to say very much, but yesterday’s experience was exhilarating.
Utsav Lal is a young man, almost still a child, and may be about 18 years old. He lived in Delhi and apparently currently lives with his family in Ireland. He is also a (western) classical and jazz pianist.
The concert began according to the tradition with an alaap, jhod and jhala in rag yaman (Kalyani in our CM). Utsav played with flair, his ideas flowed unhindered and he has complete mastery over the piano keyboard and taal. He played in perfect rhythm, without any overt show of taal. After the jhod, he played two compositions in raag yaman: one in a 7 beat cycle (rupak taal) and a second one in a faster tempo, in 16-beat teental.
After an intermission, he played what appeared to be mostly Carnatic raga Bagheshri.. At the end of the piece he did announce the raga to be Bagheshri, and I looked it up later and discovered that this raga is mentioned in different lists as equivalent to both Bagheshri and Sri Ranjni.. I did not experience the flavor of Sri Ranjani and to me it seemed all Bagheshri. I was clueless to the taal in the compositions – again, he played two pieces. I found out later that the first one was an 11-beat rudra taal, and then a faster tempo ek taal.
He then came back with a lovely mix of ragas, some kind of non-traditional blend as I found out later, and played a lovely Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram, and then suddenly, unexpectedly moved into Vaishnava Janato.. and the piece was a play between the two songs, moving from one to the other seamlessly and back. This piece was all improvisation, creativity and pizzazz and definitely brought to mind the jazz influence. This is supposedly not acceptable in a traditional concert, from a purist’s point of view, but I am sure he felt the freedom that an audience without preconceived ideas could give him.
I once again got my wish when he concluded with Hamsadhwani to my surprise. I wasn’t even aware that I loved Hamsadhwani so much, that I would (again) wish for it, as I had found myself doing earlier in the afternoon, and there, he played it too!
I wish I could say more and convey to you why I was so overjoyed with the music. I left the concert with that feeling of having received a loving gift. But I don’t have the technical knowledge to comment in greater detail even in Carnatic terms and I can only tell you that it was a sweet, stirring couple of hours. You should have seen his fingers fly, his imagination and his ideas flow, and his rapport with the tabla player, who was obviously excellent, and who seemed to enjoy the pianist too. The two seemed to have a strong regard for each other. Utsav Lal played with a constant focus on the tabla.. and each exchange brought forth smiles from both. I really wished I had greater knowledge but I am thankful that I could at least feel my way around the concert.