Santoor Duet: Shivkumar Sharma and Rahul Sharma

[Ram]

Shatatantri Media has released live santoor duet recordings from Pandit Shivkumar Sharma and Rahul Sharma's  Japan tour of 2001.  The details of the 3 released albums are given below.  This topic has been created to discuss the 3 albums. 

Santoor Duet: Live in Tokyo
Ragas - Raga Vachaspati, Raga Mishra Pahadi
Released - 10 April 2007

Santoor Duet: Live in Nagoya
Ragas - Raga Yaman, Raga Mishra Khamaj
Released - 3 April 2007

Santoor Duet: Live in Kyoto
Ragas - Raga Bhoopali, Raga Mishra Pahadi
Released - 3 April 2007

[hundredstrings]

Live concerts are always special -- the audience response is a very important aspect in any type of music and it is especially so in Indian classical.  The santoor duet albums are very good - the sheer understanding and co-ordination between the two artists - the legendary maestro and the maestro in the making -- is great.  I loved "Raga Bhoopali" the most -- the fast gats are unbelievably fast, something that is so unique to santoor.   Light classical dhuns are a forte of the legend and "Mishra Pahadi" and "Mishra Khamaj" are very beautifully played.  "Mishra Khamaj" features a ragamala (garland of different ragas) which is so nice to hear (and I have heard that it is extremely hard to play a ragamala on santoor, something that is reserved for the maestros only!).

Only thing that is lacking in these albums is the recording quality -- it could have been far better. 4.5 stars for the music, 3 stars for recording.