Mozart Can anyone imagine a silk sari-clad, diamond nose-pin wearing M S Subbulakshmi playing a piano , let alone Schubert and Mozart? But MS did own a piano, though the only remnant is the instrument itself, a baby grand Steinway, which occupies pride of place at the instrument museum at the Kalakshetra today, among the tampuras and mridangams. It was during the shoot of the 1945 Tamil film ‘ Meera ’, with MS in the lead, that the piano was ordered from Europe, recalls her grandniece and author, Gowri Ramnarayan. “Perhaps, instead of a harmonium, they decided to use a piano to compose the melodies.
” Even after the Hindi version of the film was released a few years later, the piano remained in the living room of her mansion at Kilpauk, and as children, they would play house under it, she says. “I remember MS playing it occasionally, bhajans and simple Schubert and Mozart lullabies, mostly taught by a brilliant musician who was called ‘piano Vaidyanathan’. He would play it frequently and MS would listen with great interest.
Musicians of the past were interested in all kinds of music – even European love songs and African spiritual songs. She’d sing English songs and teach them to us with Carnatic notations.” The piano has played a tiny part in Indian history as well.
The story goes that a broken-hearted Mahatma Gandhi, upset over the Partition, requested MS to record his favourite Meera bhajan – Hari Tum Haro – in her voice and send it to him. “MS tol.