People have misconceptions about Indian violinists since they play sitting down: Dr L Subramaniam

Violinist, composer and conductor Dr Subramaniam Lakshminarayana has made an indelible mark on Indian and world music. His Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival (LGMF), the 35th edition and India’s longest-running global music festival, held across five major cities ~ New Delhi, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore ~ commenced recently. For the 2026 edition, LGMF presented an extra – ordinary ensemble from Kazakhstan, featuring a symphony orchestra, balet troupe and choir ~ many of whom performed in India for the very first time. Artistic director Kavita Krishnamurti Subramaniam shared that this year’s curation is especially meaningful as it marks the Indian premiere of a brand-new orchestral composition by Dr L Subramaniam.

Titled Navagraha Symphony, the work adds to his extensive legacy of nearly 40 orchestral compositions and more than 300 global performances and recordings. The highlight of the performance was a grand finale of the Vande Mataram, which was premiered for the first time as part of the celebration of 150 years of the song. Trained in the classical Carnatic music tradition and Western classical music, he began training in violin under the tutelage of his father, Professor V Lakshminarayana. The composer also has an M.B.B.S. degree from Madras Medical College. Talking about his LGMF tour and the Navagraha Symphony, he said: “I write all my compositions.

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I did my masters in Western Classical music, orchestration, and arrangement in the early 1970s. Many of my compositions have been published in foreign countries. So, I have to be very careful. We were also premiering a ballet with the whole symphony group and the choir, Kavita, Bindu, including my granddaughter. The idea behind the Navagraha symphony is, in our culture it is believed that whenever a child is born, depending on their planetary position, astrologers can predict a child’s destiny. With the Navagraha Symphony, I wanted to bring it to the mainstream using original Sanskrit text.” This LGMF, started in honour of his father and guru, professor V Lakshminarayana, has multiple purposes, says Dr L Subramaniam. “He taught me to play violin.

When he passed away, I almost stopped playing for a while. He was responsible for making the Indian violin popular worldwide. Earlier, Indian violin was an accompanying instrument. He wanted to change the technique. He said like Western violinists play in all major concert halls as solo instruments and our Indian violinists should also play likewise. People have misconceptions about Indian violinists since they play sitting down. So, he developed a lot of solo techniques to put Indian violin in the forefront. “Once he started playing, people like Yehudi Menuhin, Stephane Grappeli approached me to collaborate and do projects with them. It became a success,” said the violinist. The composer-writer has also done some meaningful projects with Indian maestros like Sounds of India, Visions of India, Violins of Peace and a few more.

Then requests came to do so abroad as well. “We added global musicians like (Alwin Lopez) Jarreau, George Duke, African, Korean, Chinese, Japanese and many other artists from different parts of the world. That’s how it became a very powerful musical festival,” said Dr L Subramaniam. In between he has brought in some of the major orchestras in India as he feels India do not have many full-fledged orchestras, which are comparable to the London Symphony Orchestra or the Philharmonia Orchestra.

“All my work, which I was asked to write for Western orchestra and premiere there, I dreamt about bringing them to India,” he said. Someone who has composed scores for films Salaam Bombay (1988) and Mississippi Masala (1991) directed by Mira Nair, in addition to being the featured violin soloist in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little Buddha (1993) and Cotton Mary (1999) of Merchant-Ivory productions, getting awards (Padma Shri and Padma Vibhushan) is a recognition to Indian violin. “It is a reward for my father and all the violinists. After an award, people start listening to you and you get more attention. But for life, one should not stop with awards. Every day is new.

Every concert is an exam for us. People come to listen to a concert with an expectation,” he said. Talking of jugalbandi, Dr Subramaniam says it is more difficult to bring together the choir and the ballet. For the orchestra there are different instruments and one has to write for every instrument. There are also the visuals, which come in through the back screen, he adds.