Violin maestro T.N. Krishnan, whose taking part in represented the pristine fantastic thing about Carnatic ragas, died right here on Monday. He entered the music world as a baby prodigy and carried out until his final days. He was 92, and is survived by spouse Kamala, son Sriram Krishnan and daughter Viji Krishnan, who typically accompanied their father.
“None was as gifted as Krishnan when it got here to capturing the essence, style and lifetime of ragas. He had readability about what he thought was good music and he adopted it unwaveringly,” stated singer and creator T.M. Krishna, who, like Krishnan, is a disciple of Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer.
Born Tripunithura Narayanaiyer Krishnan in 1928 in Kerala, he learnt music from his father A. Narayana Iyer. He gave his first solo violin live performance in Thiruvananthapuram in 1939 as a boy of 11. He had a mentor in Alleppy Okay. Parthasarathy, and Krishnan had at all times acknowledged the help rendered by him in the course of the early days of his profession.
He had accompanied nice musicians reminiscent of Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar, Musiri Subramania Iyer, Alathur Brothers, G.N. Balasubramaniam, Madurai Mani Iyer, Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar, M.D. Ramanathan and Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer and the recordings obtainable nonetheless clarify Krishnan’s expertise as a accompanying artiste earlier than changing into a solo performer.
He shifted his base to Chennai in 1942 and got here beneath the tutelage of Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer and his profession graph emerged.
Krishnan additionally excelled as a instructor and he was the professor of music on the Music Faculty, Chennai. Later, he grew to become the Dean of College of Music and Fantastic Arts, College of Delhi. He was generally known as Professor Krishnan within the music world. He gained many awards, together with Sangita Kalanidhi of the Music Academy and the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan.
“His best property are his understanding of ragas and conviction about music. Regardless that so many issues modified over many years within the music world, he had the conviction about good music and would solely supply that — if you happen to prefer it you come to my live performance. It is vitally troublesome to have such a conviction and achieve success,” defined Mr. Krishna.
“You’ll not come throughout a single non-musical phrase in his taking part in. You can not say he experimented with music, however introduced out the present fantastic thing about the Carnatic ragas and it’s important to be in his live shows to understand how he would attain the upper octaves,” stated Lalitharam, the biographer of vocalist G.N. Balasubramaniam and mridangam participant Palani Subramania Pillai, with whom he had teamed up for a lot of live shows.
He additionally recalled a selected live performance within the Music Academy. “Krishnan performed Harikamboji and defined that he performed it to inform the world that it may very well be executed with out the traces of Khamas, Kamboji and Karaharapriya,” Mr. Lalitharam stated.
