Strings that sing
by G.S. RAJAN
V.V. Subrahmanyam gave a scintillating violin concert at the Sangeet Natak Akademi's Awardees' Festival this week

Better late than never. At last the veteran violin maestro V.V. Subrahmanyam was honoured with the Sangeet Natak Akademi award this week. Thirty-three artists belonging to the field of Indian classical music, dance, drama, regional traditions and puppetry were also honoured this year with Akademi awards presented by President APJ Abdul Kalam at the Vigyan Bhawan.

Some of the recipients of Akademi award were featured in a festival held at Meghdoot open-air theatre in the Rabindra Bhawan premises in New Delhi.

Vintage classic

Thus on Tuesday, rasikas got the rare opportunity to listen to the vintage, classic, melodic and technically perfect music of violin maestro V.V. Subrahmanyam.
Vadakancheri Veeraraghava Iyer Subrahmanyam was born in1944 in Kochi - then Cochin - in Kerala. He is perhaps one of the very few violin players who has created an excellent flawless playing technique, with tonal quality and accuracy in sruti and laya.

Popularly known in the South India as VVS, he is one artiste who doesn't go after concerts and rarely appears on stage these days. However he devotes his time to research and teaching of music.
VVS started his concert with his composition in the raga Kamala Chandrika followed by the kriti in the raga Suruti set to Rupaka tala. A short alapana in raga Lalita before presenting a composition of Shyama Shastri, "Nannu brova" in Chintamani raga, Mishra Chapu tala, was just scintillating.

Before every kriti VVS announced the characteristics of the raga and its relevance to general living. For example, he stated that rendering the raga Lalita is beneficial to those with heart problems.
His short concert concluded with a Meera bhajan in raga Sindhu Bhairavi.

It was a memorable concert with violin support from VVS's brother V.V. Ravi, besides Trichur Narendran on the mridangam and Vaikam Radhakrishnan on the ghatam.

Bending rules?
However the Akademi could not conduct audio/video recording of this rare concert, because VVS refused documentation, since the Akademi offered only Rs.5000 for recording.

Though Akademi officials say the rules don't allow them to pay more, there are several instances where the institution has bent rules for some famous globe trotting artists.

It is time SNA started following All India Radio's pattern of payment for archival recording instead of quoting rules that apply to only some artistes.