Sanya Cotta's musical fairytale

Goa's Germany-based prodigy violinist Sanya Cotta enthralls her home crowd

Nigel Britto

If Finnish composer Jean Silbelius was at Kala Academy on Wednesday evening, he would have been a happy man. Sanya Myla Cotta saw to that, and showed exactly why he's so rarely heard. The reason? Not everybody can pull his music off. The eagerly-awaited concert by Cotta and Romanian pianist Delia Varga left the full-house, as one young fan put it, "reluctant to go back home". Obviously, they did not disappoint.

The much-awaited performance, which started with Mozart and Bach, got progressively more electrifying as the Goan prodigy went on to tackle rarer names like Kreisler and Sibelius, whose compositions ranged from gypsy to bohemian and staccato, accentuated by extremely technical passages. Her renditions of Violin concerto in D minor and Allegro moderato by Sibelius strengthened her already close rapport with her audience, and firmly propelled her into a league few Indian musicians of her age have reached. A testimony of both agility and stamina, a young Goan violin student later likened her performance of those pieces to that of "a hungry cheetah on steroids".

If Sibelius proved her mastery of technique, Ziguener-Capriccio by Kreisler displayed her prowess as a performer. The sudden transformation of the melody, which was sometimes quick in spasms and sometimes loaded with mystique, was handled impressively with obvious ease and a composed lyricism.

At the end of it all, a thousand appreciative fans demanded an encore.

She obliged, adding the mando "Adues Korcho Vello" to her formidable repertoire, for which she teamed up with younger brother Dane, an 18-year-old piano diploma-holder. "It felt great", the violinist exclaimed later. The 23-year-old is a Fellow of London’s Trinity College of Music and has recently joined the prestigious German Youth Orchestra. Pianist Delia Varga is from Romania, in India as a teacher at Mumbai’s Mehli Mehta foundation.

Sanya’s father and mentor Schubert Cotta, a prominent classical guitarist and teacher, organized the concert as part of his newly-launched Opus Gala project, which believes that "music is the heartbeat of Goa". He was thrilled at the response the concert attracted. "We’re here to raise the bar", he says. "And the fact that we had a full house speaks a lot". Sanya Cotta, too, agreed. "There is an obvious increase in interest in western classical music and it's very good to know", she said.

In fact, Goa has had an unusually high number of classical concerts in August, which have won the genre a lot of new fans. The Goa State Symphonic Orchestra under the baton of Pheroze Mistry played to full houses in four locations earlier this month. And yesterday’s recital was not the end of it. Come Saturday, and Goa-born British soprano Patricia Rozario will conclude her India tour with a recital at Kala Academy.

This review was published in the Times of India, Goa, on its edition dated August 27, 2009.