Revisiting the glory days of vadya vrinda, India's national orchestra

In those days, the dream was to raise a national orchestra that matched international classical orchestras

Studio 1 is the largest recording suite at the All India Radio complex in New Delhi. And with good reason: It belongs to the Akashvani Vadya Vrinda, India’s national orchestra tasked with composing, performing and broadcasting original classical, folk and thematic works of great quality.

The kind of musicians who once worked for the ensemble, set up in the post-Independence verve of 1952, deserved that space too — sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, veena vidwan Emani Sankara Sastry, violinists T K Jayarama Iyer and S Gopalakrishnan, flautists Vijay Raghava Rao and Pannalal Ghosh, composer Anil Biswas, among them. Off and on,