The three-day annual youth festival of music of Sri Vijaya Tyagaraja Sangeetha Sabha (the earliest in Visakhapatnam established in 1950) was organised last week at Sankara matham. Felicitating four young artistes who proved to be the making of Carnatic music and the conventional presentation of gold medals, along with Rs.8000 cash, was the main feature of the fest.

The artistes were Komanduri Venkata Krishna, graded vocalist and violinist of AIR, winner of gold medals at the inter-university, and AIR competitions besides that of the Sangeet Vidwat Sabha, Kakinada. He also accompanied vocal maestros like Balamuralikrishna, Nedunuri and T.N. Seshagopalan on their tours abroad (U.S.). High grade violinist of AIR, Mavaduri Satyanarayana Sarma, besides being an Aasthan vidwan of Arasavilli and Yadagirigutta Devasthanams, was the other with comparable strides. The other two were similarly merited and accomplished artistes of comparable achievements: vocalist Bhavaraju Lakshmi Surya Teja and violinist Pappu Jnanadev.

The gold medals and cash prizes were instituted in memory of the founder members and the first two successive presidents of the Sabha, Dr. Alahari Singari and Doorvasula Dakshina Murty. Short duration recitals were rendered separately by all recipients of gold medals late in the evenings on which they were felicitated. The talk on ‘Saadhana' delivered by noted vocalist, music teacher and musicologist Pantula Rama on Sunday morning marked the fest.

Quoting extracts from Bhagavadgeetha on one hand and singing a few compositions of Tyagaraja, Rama sought to establish that piety with single minded devotion and compassion should be the characteristic feature of a sadhaka. It enables him or her to visualise divinity in the entire range of creation. All such exponents should consider themselves doubly fortunate for being destined to become musicians and endeavour to meditate upon each one of the basic units to evolve music that could merge with its original form. That is salvation, Rama summed up.