Dhwani , the annual musical concert of the philanthropic music school, Gunjar, took place on April 3 at Rabindra Bhawan Auditorium in Dum Dum. The programme celebrated classical music and felicitated the sitar maestro, Soumitra Lahiri.

The first presentation was a santoor recital by Sandip Chatterjee. He started with an aochar in the most popular evening raga, Yaman. The brief aochar was followed by a madhyalay gat in jhaptal. The use of shudhh gandhar in the vistars pleased the ears. Another interesting feature of his style of playing is that it is flashy at times and subdued at others, creating a perfect blend of poise and grandeur.

The 4-4 layakari within 5-5 beats was the highlight of the performance. Chatterjee was aptly accompanied by Subhajyoti Guha on tabla. A drut gat, composed by Chatterjee, was a stunner. The gat starts at the eighth matra of teental. This added a fresh air to the performance. The sawal-jawab at the end brought the well-balanced performance to a fitting conclusion.

Then came the much-awaited duet of Madhu Burman (tabla) and Gopal Burman (srikhol). They are undoubtedly the pioneers of tabla-srikhol jugalbandi in India. The wholesome sound of tabla complemented the folk-like vulnerability of srikhol. Srikhol is not a classical rhythm instrument. It is used as an accompaniment in devotional and folk music. This fusion jugalbandi has gained immense popularity in north and east India.

Gopal Burman recited some bols of srikhol that were evidently different from tabla bols. Madhu Burman played a beautiful composition by his guru , late Pandit Shankar Ghosh, that was a rhythmic delight for the listeners. The jugalbandi reached its peak when the dayan of srikhol and the bayan of tabla were played in sync with each other and vice versa. But the performance dragged a bit - which was the only disappointment.

The finale was another rare jugalbandi of vocal music and sitar by Sandip Nag (vocal) and Saumen Bhattacharjee (sitar), accompanied by Soumen Sarkar and Ujjwal Bharati on tabla.

They started with Raga Darbari. Nag's well-rounded voice gave the perfect texture to the andolan and gamak of the vistars in the 10-matra composition, "Prabhu kar paar ". The sitar was quite subdued in the first part of the composition, where Nag's taankari grabbed attention with the right amount of stress on the main notes. The sitar flashed again in the drut and proved that the young sitarist is under the proper tutelage of Soumitra Lahiri.

Generally, duet tabla accompaniment creates a pandemonium which hinders the main performance. But here, the understanding between the experienced tabla accompanists raised the performance to a new height. The last tarana of the performance is worth a special mention. It left the audience with the lilting notes of Raga Darbari.