Sivasri Tejaswi Surya leaves Muscat spellbound

MUSCAT: For a little over four hours on the evening of Friday, 21 August, a hall at the Al Falaj Hotel in Muscat held something the capital’s music lovers do not often get to share on this scale: a full-length Carnatic recital by Sivasri Tejaswi Surya, performed to a house of more than 1,200 people.The evening opened, as such evenings should, quietly. A Bharatanatyam curtain-raiser of five items set the register for what was to follow — precise, unhurried, and generous with the audience’s attention. The ceremonial lighting of the lamp brought the gathering to its feet, and by the time the artistes took their places on stage the hall had settled into the particular stillness that tells a performer the room is listening.What followed was a recital in the full classical form: two halves separated by a short interval, an ensemble of vocal support, mridangam, dholki and harmonium, and — in the second half — a thani avartanam that drew the loudest and longest applause of the night. Sivasri Tejaswi Surya moved between the meditative and the exuberant with an ease that belied the demands of the format, holding phrases long enough for the hall to breathe with her and then releasing them into passages of rhythmic brilliance that had listeners marking tala on their knees. Whole rows sat forward. Children who had arrived restless were, by the second item, entirely still.Audiences in Muscat are known for their warmth, but those present spoke afterwards of something beyond warmth — of an evening that, for a few hours, transported a crowded hall somewhere else entirely, and returned it reluctantly. Long after the closing item, listeners lingered in the foyer rather than leave, which is perhaps the most honest review a concert can receive.The artistes themselves said as much. Performers who tour widely are not easily surprised by an audience, and yet the response from the Muscat gathering — its attentiveness, its knowledge of the repertoire, its willingness to sit with a slow, elaborate passage rather than wait for the next familiar melody — was singled out repeatedly from the stage as among the finest they had encountered. That is a compliment to this city and to the listeners in it, and it is worth recording.An evening of this scale does not happen in isolation. It happens because it is possible — and it is possible here because of the Sultanate of Oman.Oman has, for generations, made room for the many communities that have chosen to make it their home, and it has done so with a grace that residents of this country never take for granted. Under the wise leadership of His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik, that tradition of tolerance, openness and cultural coexistence has been carried forward and strengthened. It is because of this that the arts of many nations are able to find a stage in Muscat, that visiting artistes are received here with such courtesy, and that a hall of 1,200 people can gather on a Friday evening to share in music from far away, entirely at home.To the leadership of Oman, to its people, and to the institutions of this country that have created and protected the space in which cultural life can flourish, the sincere gratitude of everyone associated with this evening is owed. It is a privilege to be able to invite artistes of this calibre to perform here, and that privilege is a gift of this country.