Sripada Pinakapani’s successful quest for passing on his encyclopaedic knowledge of music to future generations, and a life immersed in pursuit of various great renderings of maestros truly made him a sadguru, his disciple and noted exponent of Carnatic music Nedunuri Krishnamurthy has said.
Speaking at a Shraddhanjali organised by Visakha Samskrutika Sabhaa Samakya on Monday, he said he was an ocean of musical knowledge, and an ideal for future generations. He made it a point to listen to greats like Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar, whom he considered his ideal, G.N. Balasubramaniam, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, among others, and wrote thousands of notations. His “swarajnanam” and writing down notations were legendary.
Recalling that he had learnt music along with Nukala Chinna Satyanarayana, Srirangam Gopalaratnam and Voleti Venkateswarlu, among others, he said he continued to learn the art after Dr. Pinakapani shifted to Kurnool, where he later became a principal of the medical college there.
His success in the South, in spite of being from Andhra Pradesh, owed a lot to his learning from Dr. Pinakapani, Mr. Krishnamurthy said.
He breathed music, and his only passion was to bequeath his knowledge to future generations, he said.
Nedunuri’s plea
Mr. Krishnamurthy wanted the samakhya to create an endowment in Dr. Pinakapani’s name, and also make efforts to install his statue on the beach road. Mr. Krishnamurthy performed his first public performance in Visakhapatnam in 1939 after completing his medical education.
Noted actor Gollapudi Maruti Rao described Dr. Pinakapani as one of the three great persons who lived 100 years of life with fulfilment and achieved greatness. The other two were Sir Mokshagundam Visvesarayya and Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati.
By bringing out books on music and its nuances, his contribution to the hoary guru-sishya parampara in music was immense, Mr. Maruti Rao said. He recalled the innumerable interviews he carried out with the legendary musicologist.
Describing him as the musician of the century, Director of NSTL S.V. Rangarajan said he wrote notations like a bee collecting honey from innumerable flowers. He picked up the nuances of the Tanjore style of music and passed it on to his sishyas. He was selfless, and got a ‘vaddanam’ made for Sitammavaru at Bhadrachalam with the gold medals he received.
Visakha Rasagna Vedika president G. Raghurama Rao described him as a person who achieved excellence both as a doctor and musician. Visakha Music and Dance Academy president C.S.N. Raju compared him to saint-composer Tyagaraja. Dr. Pinakapani was preoccupied with writing notations even when he was 90 years old, he said, recalling his experience when he went to present “Nada Vidyabharati” title to him at Kurnool.
Earlier, samakhya co-ordinator G. Prabhakar made an interesting presentation on the life and times of Dr. Pinakapani. Samakhya convenors S. Vijay Kumar and G.R.K. Prasad participated. Earlier, Dr. Bhamidipati Kanaka Durga Prasad presented a veena recital.
