The Kleine Zaal in the late-19th-century Concertgebouw rewards focus more than spectacle, which made it a good room for award-winning sitarist Jasdeep Singh Degun and the virtuosic tabla player Yama Sarshar to captivate. They walked on together in humble demeanour and offered a few clear, endearing sentences about what the audience would hear, then set off into Raga Bageshri—a late-evening raga whose mood sits between composure and longing. Degun sketched the form for newcomers: an alap–jor–jhala arc without percussion, followed by a composed gat when the tabla joins and the tāl cycles come to the fore. It was a useful bit of framing: a few bearings for a rule-bound, improvised form, without slowing the evening for a seemingly eager audience.

Like all Ragas, Raga Bageshri traces it’s origin back to the Samaveda, and is meant to depict the emotion of waiting for reunion with one’s lover. It belongs to Kafi thaat, leans on the flattened third and seventh like a natural minor scale (komal Ga and Ni), treats Ma (Fa) as its centre of gravity (vadi), and often soft-pedals Pa (Sol), which lends the raga its inwardness. Heard that way, Degun’s opening made sense: long meends establishing contour, patient returns to Ma, and phrases that rested on the tonic with a satisfying sense of calm. The jor arrived as a quiet tightening of pulse; the jhala brightened texture without chasing speed for its own sake. In the second half, with tintal in place, Sarshar’s thekā sat warm and spare—time kept as a welcome rather than a command. His cadential bursts were neatly scaled: a handful of relā figures and a compact tihāī that landed on the sam with the satisfaction of a solved equation. 

What the duo made plain, without lecturing, was how Hindustani and Carnatic music performance balances restrictions and creativity. The rules: pitch sets, characteristic phrases, a grammar of approach and resolution. The risk: choosing lines, in real time, that honour that grammar without sounding pre-fitted. Degun’s touch favoured line over dazzle; he kept the high register glowing rather than screaming, and only broke into a virtuosic climax when the music so demanded. Sarshar partnered with chamber-music tact: accents placed like necessary punctuation, space left for ideas to turn around, and never throwing himself into the way of the melodies. When his short but thrilling solos came, it felt like a crafty continuation of the conversation than Degun had earlier initiated.

Backstage, Yama Sarshar spoke to me about the part of his playing that resists explanation. He comes from a musical Afghan family: father and grandfather both musicians, and began on the tabla as a toddler. “The spiritual connection I have with music—it’s something I can never describe,” he said. “Sometimes it wants to sing and sometimes it doesn’t; you can’t force it.” What drew Leeds-born Degun, the first musician in his family, to the sitar, he said, was the paradox of the instrument: frets, yet the freedom to bend notes into long meends. That flexibility lets him play in ‘gayaki ang’ or the vocal approach, so phrases behave like sung lines rather than fixed finger patterns. “The emotion and musicality you can get from that is beautiful,” he says.

The evening also belonged, in a real sense, to DesiYUP, the Rotterdam-based presenter that brought the concert to the Concertgebouw. Founded by Mahesvari Autar, DesiYUP has spent the past decade building rooms for South Asian classical and devotional traditions in Dutch halls: concerts, workshops, and small gatherings that cultivate audience alongside artistry. Their work with the Concertgebouw has become a reliable conduit for this repertoire; the Degun–Sarshar date sold out, and the post-concert meet-and-greet also served as a warm community get-together. There is value in this continuity: it keeps new listeners coming back and gives folk and international artists an avenue where explanation isn’t an apology for the music, but a bridge to it. 

It helps, too, that the hall has a framework for such nights. Under the Concertgebouw Connects umbrella—an initiative that platforms non-Western traditions within the institution’s calendar—the venue has quietly widened what it presents without forcing “crossover” contortions. Backing from Ammodo has helped make the series durable, which is what world and folk music needs: fewer one-offs and more returns. 

The audience, which looked like the city does when you’re paying attention: diaspora families, conservatory students availing discounts, omnivorous concertgoers, the simply curious first timers—seemed to register that equilibrium. The explanatory preface at the top did its job, and then the music did the rest. That’s the pact this repertoire offers a hall like the Kleine Zaal: if you listen closely, the experience is increasingly personal, intimate and satisfying.

Degun’s work has ranged from recital stages to orchestral and operatic projects; the point isn’t “fusion” so much as scale—making rooms, literal and figurative, where the sitar isn’t a guest instrument. In Amsterdam he stayed within the classic grammar and trusted it. Sarshar, widely active in the Netherlands, met that restraint with an accompaniment that was supportive but also creatively original.

For the encore, Degun slipped a theme from his Opera North Orpheus project into Rāg Bhairavi. It came compact and song-like, melody first, ornaments tucked in, with Sarshar easing a light groove beneath so the tune could glow and say goodnight. As the applause settled, you sensed the value of nights like this for Amsterdam’s scene. They don’t try to prove a point about tradition or modernity; they show how an under-presented art form works when given a serious stage and a prepared audience.

If the Concertgebouw keeps making space for that habit, more evenings will feel as unforced, welcoming and as quietly persuasive as this one.