[avigesaa]

If you're interested in taking things in the opposite direction, try reducing the prominence of parentheses via ParenFace (http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/ParenFace). I use a very light gray face for parentheses, which is barely visible on a white background.

[twism]

highlight-parentheses minor mode hack which is found here

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2413047/can-emacs-color-d...

seems to me like the best solution so far. It only applies "rainbow parens" to the parentheses and parents parentheses of the s-expressions at the cursor.