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Tour de France: Two fiddlers and a pianist

Trio Ranganathan is a French Western classical ensemble that recently performed in India. But is there more to their desi connect? Gargi Gupta finds out

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Trio Ranganathan was on a five-city tour of India that ended with Delhi last Thursday
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The name 'Trio Ranganathan', an ensemble that plays Western classical compositions, bespeaks an Indian connection. But the three Ranganathan brothers are actually all French. Born to an Indian father and Polish mother, they grew up in the French town of Tours, where they learnt music from a very young age, at a well known conservatory (as music schools are called in France). At 27, the eldest, Ajay is on the violin, with twins Ravi and Theo, 24, on the cello and piano respectively. The trio, which has won several chamber music competitions in Europe, has been on a five-city tour of India that ended with a performance in Delhi last Thursday.

Western classical music is most often identified by grand orchestras—scores of musicians in formal dress moving to the rise and fall of the conductor's baton, but there's also chamber music, compositions devised for smaller groups. Of these, the string quartet is the best known but the trio was favoured by many composers in Europe from the 18th century onwards, says Ajay.

For their Delhi performance, the brothers chose three French composers—Ernest Chausson, Gabriel Faure and Maurice Ravel—playing pieces selected to showcase the history of the form and its range of effects—romantic and fast-paced, staccato and lyrical, simple and complex. And the thought that most of their Indian listeners wouldn't know these didn't worry them.

"We can't say that in Europe everyone knows about classical music. People are always more interested in popular music. So when we play in small towns in France, we do the same as we do here—we talk about the composer, and try to explain," says Theo, in halting, heavily accented English.

As for the musical traditions of India, the brothers say they grew up hearing their father, a physicist, sing in the Carnatic style. But, perhaps because his is the only instrument (the violin) also used in Carnatic music, Ajay is the only one to have acquired some formal training, having spent a few weeks with violin maestros V.V. Subramaniam and L. Subramaniam in France and Bangalore. But such training can be a mixed blessing.

"Carnatic music," says Ajay, "offers some tools which are not taught in Western classical music, but can be used. For example, in one part of Ravel's Trio, it is written 'play very expressively' on one string. I take it to mean that we can 'slide' between notes, even though 'slides' are considered to be in 'bad taste' in Western classical music. I can do it, but very carefully."

His younger brother Ravi, on the other hand, had a more difficult run with Indian music. He spent two weeks trying to learn the mridangam, but had to give up when his hands started to bleed. "There was blood everywhere. With the cello, we use the tips, but in mrindangam we use this part," he says, showing the middle part of the finger. "My teacher told me I had baby hands."

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