Recently, Tengku Irfan took a break from his studies at the Juilliard School in New York to conduct the Malaysian Philharmonic Youth Orchestra’s (MPYO) Elixir Of Youth concert.
The event was held at the Petronas Filharmonik Hall in Kuala Lumpur on Dec 10. Although, this was the first time that the 19-year-old musician was taking on the role of conductor at this venue, he has conducted an orchestra before.
Back in 2015, Irfan made his debut as a conductor at the MusicNova Orchestra event held in Phoenix, Arizona.
“As a young conductor, there is a lot of pressure,” Irfan said in an interview before going on stage. There will be questions about what makes you different. Why are you chosen to lead? Why not someone older? There are also expectations on how you lead a large ensemble.”
Despite the questions, Irfan also knows that the most important thing is “to do your best, regardless of what challenges are thrown at you”.
For him, knowing the secessionists in the MPYO ensemble trust him to lead them is more crucial.
“It’s nice being around people of the same age. They are very welcoming and receptive of my suggestions. I also like seeing improvement and changes in their confidence. As a conductor, it’s your job to make all the secessionists come together.”
The Elixir Of Youth concert also saw the world premiere of Irfan’s original composition What Does It Take To Dance? – a piece that was commissioned for the event.
“The inspiration for the piece is the MPYO itself. The Elixir Of Youth is meant to celebrate MYPO’s 10th anniversary.
“So I wanted to do something celebratory and majestic, yet not cheesy. I came across the idea of dance. It’s something universal. Everybody can relate to the idea of dance from waltz to joget.”
Prodigious Irfan, who started composing piano pieces at the age of seven, admitted that it has become harder for him to write as he gets older.
“I feel that I’ve become more self-critical. It’s hard to find ideas that are fresh or new. You are used to hearing what is already around. It’s difficult to get out of the box. Writing is a struggle for me.”
He added: “For the MPYO, I wanted it to be something exciting and fresh yet not too intimidating. Still it has to have its own set of challenges for the young team.”
Musician Tengku Irfan takes the spotlight as the conductor at the Elixir Of Youth concert. Photo: The Star/Low Boon Tat
What’s Next?
What Does It Take To Dance? took Irfan two months to complete. He is thankful for the one thing that helped him to get the piece ready in time for the concert.
“There’s this thing called a deadline,” he said with a smile.
“If I didn’t have a deadline, this piece could’ve taken forever. When it reached the point when I could say this is good enough, I stopped tinkering with it.”
He has many more milestones he wants to achieve in the music field.
One of the things Irfan finds joy in is accompanying other musicians. He also finds it interesting in how other musicians interpret his compositions.
“There’s a piano piece that I wrote sometime ago and I would ask someone else to play it. I like finding new possibilities when I hear someone else playing my pieces. I can dive deeper into the music rather than think about the technicalities of piano playing.”
