P adma Vibhushan Sangeet Kalanidhi et al ... an endless list of titles and honours - Dr. Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna was a unique entity from his boyhood till he left us for better horizons. He was one inimitable, incomparable and incomprehensible musical genius!
I knew of him long before we met. It was a pre-ordained connection, which began when we first met at the crowded Chennai Central station, when I went to receive him for our concert tour covering Kerala and Karnataka with the legendary Lalgudi Jayaraman.
We greeted each other with a “hello Murali” and a “hello TVG”! This awareness and acceptance of each other blossomed into an aesthetic intimacy which was vibrant even as I sat by his side on his 87th birthday at the Kamarajar hall!
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Holding our hands we kept silent, even as those sublime moments of musical ecstasy flitting across our minds like visual montages!
We had understood each other at every conscious and sub-conscious level and our concerts became legendary! The language we understood was always one of finesse, aesthetics and immense beauty.
I cannot forget my very dear friend and the Supreme accompanist musician the great MSG. We captured the imagination of rasikas belonging to all generations - young and old, men and women, who would be ever mesmerised by the magic that prevailed when we three - Muraligaru, MSG and me joined hands !
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Muraligaru was God’s gift to the musically sensitive around the globe. He was a serious, analytical and consummate performer – rather small in physical stature but handsome and towered over the entire scene once he took the stage. There was no audience which would not come under the spell of the silky lilt of his voice, which was always under his majestic control. He could travel easily through four octaves.
There was nothing which was beyond his achievement. Nothing which he could not unravel, nothing which he could not imagine, create, compose, sing or teach!
I am told that he was giving mini concerts in his sleep in the last few days of his conscious existence!
He emerged as a full-fledged icon when Carnatic music was steadily losing the great masters of yesteryear and eventually spanned two centuries, with unprecedented glory.
As a composer, he is next to none. His scholarship was always tempered by his acute sense of musical and lyrical aesthetics.
I can recall many compositions, which came to him just before a concert and which he would present as a finished, polished jewel. Spontaneity therefore was the other most coveted aspect of his music.
We never planned a concert. I cannot express the thrill when I accompanied such great music with ease and aesthetic abandon!
The most ecstatic moments in my entire musical career as an accompanist began with my Guru and ended with when I accompanied Muraligaru.
His sensitive humaneness laced with a playful streak, subtle sense of humour, his capacity to imitate anything and the knowledge with which he could discuss anything under the sun, brought us closer.
Dr. Balamurali Krishna was surely one of the greatest, one of the simplest, one of the most aesthetic and finally one of the most revered musical genius ever to visit this beautiful earth of ours!
Muraligaru... WE MISS YOU !!!