David Dalle
Thursday March 12th, 2020 with David Dalle
Ravi Shankar's final work, completely unexpected, unique, and magnificent!

Today I am featuring an extraordinary new recording which was both completely unexpected and an utter delight. A live recording from the premiere of Ravi Shankar's final work, his opera Sukanya. Ravi Shankar first had the idea in the 1990's of composing an opera for his 2nd wife Sukanya, who was named after a princess in a story in the Mahabharata who falls in love and marries an old sage. Ravi Shankar saw parallels with his own life, as there were over 3-decade age difference between himself and Sukanya. The story of Sukanya is a sweet and joyful love story, and Ravi Shankar intended it as a gift for his wife. Shankar had first composed orchestral music combining Western classical and Indian classical music with his two sitar concertos from 1971 and 1981 and composed a symphony later which was premiered by the London Philharmonic in 2012. At 90 he decided he wanted to write the opera knowing time was fleeting, he worked feverishly on it during his last two years. It was not completely finished, and his daughter Anoushka and his longtime collaborator conductor David Murphy worked together to complete the score. The whole opera is based musically on Rag Yaman Kalyan, Sukanya's favourite Raga and the raga Ravi Shankar was playing when she fell in love with him. I find the orchestral writing and the fusion with the Indian soloists is far more sophisticated than his earlier concertos from the 70s and 80s. The opera soloists do a wonderful job singing Sargam, there are many unique and enchanting moments like the Indian percussionists performing the vocal konnakol while the soloists sing operatic arias above, extremely tender and beautiful moments, and overall, a work of enormous exuberance and deep joy. I did not expect there was an opera from the 92 year old Ravi Shankar waiting to be heard, astonishing, wonderful! The opera received its premiere with David Murphy conducting the London Philharmonic, solo singers, the BBC singers and five Indian classical musicians: Parimal Sadaphal on sitar, Ashwani Shankar on shehnai, Rajkumar Misra on tabla, M Balachandar on mridangam, Pirashanna Thevarajah on ghatam and morsing, the latter two percussionists also performed the vocal percussion konnakol. The premiere was recorded and just recently released. The opera has also received a repeat performance by the London Symphony Orchestra this past January with most of the same musicians. You can read more about Sukanya and read the libretto by Amit Chaudhuri here: https://issuu.com/londonphilharmonic/docs/lpo-0115_sukanya_booklet_pages