Playing together creates a universal musical sync
Dr. Lakshminarayana Subramaniam is an internationally acclaimed Indian violinist, composer and conductor, trained in the classical Carnatic music tradition and Western classical music, and renowned for his virtuoso playing techniques and compositions in orchestral fusion. One of the biggest figures of Indian Classical violin, Subramaniam along with the Berik Batyrkhanuly, conductor and director and Anastasiia Kozhushko, manager of Astana Symphony Philharmonic Orchestra (ASPO) spoke to The Daily Star prior to his collaborative performance today at the sixth Bengal Classical Music Festival in Dhaka.
ASPO is considered one of the most notable orchestras of Kazakhstan and has so far collaborated with many distinguished conductors including the likes of K Penderecki, V Ashkenazy, R Gutter, A Tchaikovsky, R Kanetti, and D Brosse, amongst others.
Elaborating the essence of music collaboration, Subramaniam said, “There are two things – we have our own Indian classical music, which is very strong regarding its having thousands of years of tradition. We journeyed through Baroque, Romantic and Classical periods where lots of great musicians, composers, and orchestral musicians contributed much to enrich the realm of music. That was so strongly focused on harmony, counter-point and so many instruments covering eight octaves; but our music zooms in on microtones, melodic concepts and very difficult polyrhythm. But there is common ground – very few right compositions. We can create some beautiful things which are appreciated by both the Indian and Western audience. Sometimes it is difficult for our non-western audience to appreciate Indian Classical Music and vice versa. In vocal music there is a language barrier that is not applicable to instrumental music. If you look at the history of Indian Music, it all started from Vedas. After twelfth century, during the Mughal era, it slowly developed and instruments were modified. It took lots of beautiful influences.”
“I collaborated with many world-renowned musicians. Every effort got momentum and people loved it. It is now the era of global music to perform on global platform. We have to understand each other and find peace and harmony in musical collaboration. Music is very important medium of expression of feelings and moods. We play together on stage and forget all our imposed identities. We create music happily going beyond all barriers,” he added.
Sharing his experience with the legendary L Subramaniam, Berik Batyrkhanuly spoke while Anastasiia Kozhushko interpreted in English.
“Thanks for hosting such a beautiful music festival in a lovely country. It is a great pleasure and honour to be here concerning our collaboration with Dr. Subramaniam. We have our own tradition of classical orchestra. Back in 1980s Dr. Subramaniam performed with a collaborative orchestra in Russia and we listened to him. The collaboration between Indian classical and Western classical music creates a unique genre which would be special music for the world in general. History suggests that the folk music emerged as distinctive genre while classical orchestra music was separated. But now we can bring a completely different level of music which will be a great genre of music,” said Berik Batyrkhanuly
The maestro is all set to set sail the musical voyage with the large number of members of ASPO. L Subramaniam will start off the musical flight with Indian classical while the orchestra will play a western classical composition by Leon Chekhovsky. After that the orchestra will perform one of Subramaniam's symphonies called “Turbulence”, and at the end, all the artistes will play “Shantipriya”, a piece predominantly based on Raga Charukeshi.
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