In the 50s and the 60s, she was qute a star performer on the AIR and in the Radio Sangeet Sammelan programmes. May be even in the early 70s. Afterwards, it was rather too rare to hear her. I wonder that this piece was retrieved for the nostalgic pleasure of my generation. What is strange that accompanying her is a younger legend--Bickram Ghosh. Grateful.
The highlight here is certainly the accompaniment by Bickram Ghosh (albeit in his rarely heard earlier days) where the focus is on a restrained, musically inclined theka which moulds and manoeuvres itself according to the chalan of the composition and its offshoots. Unfortunately musicality in theka is a lost art and Bickram Ghosh's descent into the depths of Page 3 shenanigans is a sordid reminder of where we stand in terms of music.
+Krishnaroop Chakrabarty Sadly true but I haven't read a more precise but factually correct summary of Junior Ghosh's career elsewhere. There is a CD by Shahid Parvez called "A Tribute to Dulalbabu" where his accompaniment was masterful, at least IMHO.
+Anirban Banerjee Thank You Anirban Babu. If memory serves it was Anindo Chatterjee who had accompanied Shahid Parvez in that particular cd you mention, the raag being Darbari. A stellar recording of Bilaskhani Todi however floats around on youtube where Shahid Parvez's considerable technical dexterity is matched ably by Bickram's unusual restraint . The year was 1996. While Shankar Ghosh's flamboyance is much feted, the younger Ghosh, at least initially, showed a greater affinity to all round fluid accompaniment, which highlighted the gross music rather than individual flourishes of virtuosity. I only wish we could have had more.
krishnaroop da and anirbon da. firstly, bless you for your thoughts. righteous they are indeed! can we really compare shankar da and bickram da with shahid??? we speak of entities who are a world apart. sky gods compared to a "machine"? to learn the sitar you have to burn the midnight oil, but to play "music" you have to burn an entire life! but we are talking sweet apples to sour oranges. now ......abba; is a completely different story altogether. every golden mizrab stroke was bespoken with an uncanny unpredictability. every phrase was new and profound; but; look at this mad world. they prefer predictable machines against the viola with a human voice, played by an angelic human...... my beloved doe-eyed sisirkona dhar chowdhury!!! I envisioned this decades ago....and today it is so true. the world has gone mad! joi bangla. pronam!!!
She used a violin with sympathetic strings so it may sound like viola but is not, just a very special violin in the hands of a master, she spent many last years working at Ali Akbar College of music teaching and transcribing many ragas written by Baba Allaudin Khan and then teaching in the the Fremont area in California.
