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Three musicians who have shared a decade of festivals, competitions and conservatory hallways are performing together at Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS (DFP) on 3 October.
The piece they chose is Beethoven’s Triple Concerto — one of the only works in the entire orchestral repertoire written specifically for three soloists at once.
Malaysian violinist Low Zi Yang, 22, Australian cellist Benett Tsai, 23, and Canadian pianist Tony Yike Yang, 27, will perform alongside the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Michal Nesterowicz.
Low made his orchestral debut on this same stage at age 13 with the Malaysian Philharmonic (MPO) Youth Orchestra.
He is currently an Artist in Residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium — one of the most selective classical music institutions in Europe, named after the Belgian queen who personally championed young musicians and founded the International Queen Elisabeth Competition, which remains among the most prestigious in the world.
There, he studies under violinist Augustin Dumay, a former protégé of Yehudi Menuhin, the 20th century’s most celebrated violin virtuoso.
He performs on a 1718 Francesco Ruggieri violin on loan from the Rin Collection in Singapore — built in the same Italian city by the man believed to have taught Stradivari, the 17th-century craftsman whose violins now sell at auction for millions of dollars and are considered the most valuable instruments ever made.
The 22-year-old from Kuala Lumpur is borrowing it.
Three Soloists, Three Continents, One Shared Address In Los Angeles
Tsai, who began cello at age five, won the Prix Jean-Nicolas Firmenich at the Verbier Festival earlier this year.
He plays a 1719 Giuseppe Guarneri cello on loan from a private benefactor.
The two instruments were built within a year of each other, three centuries ago.
Yang became the youngest laureate in the history of the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 2015, at age 16.
He subsequently graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Economics — not music — while maintaining an international concert career.
He has since performed for royalty, including Queen Consort Camilla of the United Kingdom.
Both Low and Tsai studied at the Colburn School in Los Angeles before their paths diverged across three continents.
What’s On The Programme
The concert opens with an Overture for The Roots of Heaven, a 1958 film score featuring an orchestral rendering of elephants crossing the African plain.
It closes with Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 5, first performed in London in 1943 — in the middle of World War II, to an audience that had spent years under German bombing.
The English composer was 71 at the time and had lived through both World Wars.
Critics and audiences have described it since as “a message of heavenly consolation.”
He wrote it during the worst years of the 20th century; it does not sound like it.
Tickets range from RM249 to RM499.
You can purchase tickets online directly through the official MPO Event Page or via MyTicket Asia, which serves as an authorised ticketing platform for the event
Box office: 03-23317007.
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