India | Hindustani Classical Music | Kirpal Singh Panesar | Raga Kirwani

Raga Kirwani - alap

This video features a performance of Hindustani classical music by internationally renowned UK-based esraj and tar shehnai player Kirpal Singh Panesar, accompanied on tabla by his elder brother Gurdit Singh Panesar.
The concert, held at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in November 2021, was a rare opportunity to hear both the esraj and the tar shehnai, two musical instruments nowadays seldom played in Hindustani classical music, especially in Europe. The esraj is a long-necked bowed lute with a skin-covered wooden resonator and movable frets; most of its numerous strings resonate sympathetically, as only four are played to produce the melody. The tar shehnai is a an esraj on which a bell-shaped resonator (resembling a small gramophone speaker) is attached, producing the distinctive timbre, which evokes that of the shehnai, the best-known North Indian shawm (double-reed instrument). “Tar shehnai”, in fact, literally means “string shawm”.
Kirpal Singh Panesar’s training reflects his twofold musical talent: he studied both with the great shehnai master Ustad Bismillah Khan and with string virtuosos, such as Ustad Surjeet Singh and Ustad Gurdev Singh. Kirpal’s musical identity emerges from the combination of these experiences and can be admired in his ability to make the most of the expressive potential of his instruments and their ethereal sonorities.

This video excerpt features Kirpal Singh Panesar on tar shehnai, playing the beginning of an alap, the introductory section of the performance, in which the soloist – without any accompaniment on drums – presents the musical identity of the raga (the melodic framework of the music). Here Kirpal performs Raga Kirwani, a late evening raga, characterised by a heptatonic scale, with diminished third and sixth degrees, and with the first and fifth degrees as pivotal pitches. Scale, characteristic pitches, and melodic movements are presented across the middle, lower and upper octaves respectively. This excerpt fades out after Kirpal Singh Panesar establishes the Sa (the first and most important pivotal degree) in the upper octave, after having explored and presented the pitches of this raga, as well as their relationships through melodic formulae.

The performance, curated by Prof. Laura Leante, was organized by the Intercultural Institute for Comparative Music Studies of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in collaboration with Durham University’s Music Department.

Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, 24 November 2021

Video: Simone Tarsitani

More info on this event:
https://www.cini.it/en/events/meeting-and-concert-of-indian-music-with-kirpal-and-gurdit-panesar
https://www.cini.it/en/institutes-and-centres/comparative-music-studies

Видео India | Hindustani Classical Music | Kirpal Singh Panesar | Raga Kirwani канала Fondazione Giorgio Cini