Music on stage that never forgets

AHMEDABAD: Music was memory on the first day of the 2015 edition of Saptak. Pandit Ravi Shankar, the sitar immortal, played Kaunsi Kanada with Pandit Kishan Maharaj, the exalted tabla maestro of the Banaras gharana — this remembrance from the first Saptak in 1980 is as fresh and insistent in the mind of Prafull Anubhai as the news scroll on TV.
“I remember it vividly,” Anubhai, a Saptak trustee, told TOI standing at the entrance of the concert venue of the current edition of the festival.“It was so magical that Kaunsi Kanada is still playing in my head. In fact, I also recall that sitarist Kartick Kumar played an assisting role that night, at Jai Shankar Sundari Hall in Raikhad.”
Inside, Sanjeev Shankar and Ashwini Shankar were playing Bihag on shehnai. Memory rose again for rasikas like the recollection of love. Last year, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia — whose flute shows that great beauty can be just the expiration of breath of a genius — had played Bihag too. Rasikas began to compare notes and metaphors achieved the customary Saptak extravagance. Indeed, Panditji’s Bihag was like fragrance, one had to hold breath to savour it. Shankars’ shehnais produced a variation which will surely yield lush reminiscences next year in relation to a 2016 rendition of Bihag.
This continuity is part of an essential Saptak value. “I like the uniquely informal setting here,” said Prithviraj Mishra, a rising tabla star who was a beloved discipline of Pandit Nandan Mehta, the Saptak founder. “In Mumbai, you will find a greenroom with your name emblazoned on it. That seems so organized.” Mishra will perform on January 7.