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Entertainment
Novel experiment in sound
"DAWN TO dusk" was presented at the Museum Theatre, on December 5, by Ariane Gray-Hubert, who was on the piano, and S. Karthick, on the ghatam as part of The Other Festival. Ariane, an accomplished pianist and vocalist is a two-time recipient of the French Lavoisier scholarship. Karthick is a renowned percussionist, a pupil of Vikku Vinayakram.
The programme comprised pieces alternately for solo piano and piano with ghatam, accompanied by some nattuvangam. Ghatam being a percussion instrument, the solos chosen also highlighted the piano's percussive property from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century repertoire. The ensemble pieces were either composed or arranged by Ariane. The cohesion of the whole performance was striking.
The opening "Om Ganapati" incantations (voice) were by both the artistes. Then there was a series of pieces(piano) by Satie, Debussy and Mussorgsky . Erik Satie's Gnossiennes was typical of the composer with traditional harmonies juxtaposed in usual relations, the aspect of the composer on which "Les Six" modelled their music. This piece and the following two Preludes by Debussy (Volumes 1 and 2, "La Puerta del vino" and "Ce qu'a vu le vent de I' Ouest", showed the pianist's virtuosity. The stormy sweep of the wind in the latter piece was well depicted. An excerpt from Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" was arranged to incorporate the ghatam with the piano.
Ariane's creativity in composition was evident in "Raga Natai" based on an original composition by Tyagaraja, in which piano, ghatam and voice joined together interwove a delightful tapestry of sound. Karthick's mastery over his instrument was also evident in this piece. This was followed by the charming "El Albaicin" from Albeniz's suite Iberia in the Spanish idiom, which demonstrated the pianist's versatility of style.
Debussy's Masques, as Ariane explained, was composed after Debussy first heard the Javanese gamelan. This piece, which imitates the gamelan's percussive style, was well suited in an arrangement with the ghatam. "Khillona-Tillona" was the humorous final number in which both performers started talking in their own tongues, Ariane in French and Karthick in Tamil, and was finally replaced by the universal language of music.
— RPI
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