Ilaiyaraaja was felicitated by the Tamil Nadu government, on completing 50 years in the film industry. The composer, who began his film journey with Annakili (1976), presented his first ever symphony, titled Valiant, in London.
Speaking at the event, Ilaiyaraaja said, “This symphony is a result of my imagination feeding notes for every instrumentalist of the orchestra. In order to write this symphony, I spent my whole life with music, but I couldn’t spend time with my children. If I spent time with my children, I couldn’t have composed this symphony, nor could I have composed any of the songs that you listen to. So I mainly want to thank my children, Karthik Raja and Yuvan, for tolerating me.”
Talking about composing the symphony, he went on to say, “I had a lot of limits, while writing the symphony. Even though I am from a village, I cannot imbibe folk music. Even though I compose music for films, I cannot use the style, used for those scores. The music shouldn’t reflect the fact that I am from Tamil Nadu or from India. Nobody should be able to accuse me of plagarising every international composer that I listened to. But the tears on every one of your eyes, after listening to the symphony, is the end result of my efforts towards composing it.”