Milestones on HK Phil’s journey to 2019 Orchestra of the Year – playing with Itzhak Perlman, Swire Group’s patronage, Jaap van Zweden taking over the baton
- Fully professional since 1974, the HK Phil recorded its first album in 1982; notable soloists in its early years included Itzhak Perlman and Isaac Stern
- Music directors David Atherton and Edo de Waart helped develop the orchestra, before van Zweden took over in 2012 and led it to this year’s accolade
The award “celebrates ensembles that have made significant recorded contributions in the past year”, according to the UK-based magazine. In the case of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, it was its milestone recordings of Wagner’s The Ring Cycle – made at concert performances between 2015 and 2018 and released as a 14-disc set by the Naxos label last year – that saw it voted the first Asian winner of the Gramophone award.
These are some of the other milestones in the orchestra’s history:
1957 The Sino-British Orchestra is renamed Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.
1974 The Hong Kong Philharmonic becomes a fully professional ensemble; Lim Kek Tjiang becomes the orchestra’s first music director.
1976 Violinist Itzhak Perlman performs with the orchestra in a fund-raising concert.
1982 Maxim Shostakovich, son of the Russian composer, and his son Dmitri perform with the orchestra in an all-Russian programme to open the 10th Hong Kong Arts Festival
1982 The orchestra records its first album, Colourful Clouds
1986 Hong Kong Phil performs in mainland China for the first time in a three-city tour to Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou
1989 Conductor David Atherton, founder of the London Sinfonietta, becomes the orchestra’s music director, a position he will occupy for 11 years.
1995 The orchestra records an all-Stravinsky CD for major European label Virgin EMI Classics
1997 At the age of 77, violinist Isaac Stern performs his only concert with the Hong Kong Philharmonic
2004 “Orchestra builder” Edo de Waart becomes the orchestra’s music director
2006 The Swire Group becomes the orchestra’s principal patron
2012 Jaap van Zweden becomes Hong Kong Philharmonic music director
2015 Orchestra’s cycle of concert performances of the four operas that make up Wagner’s The Ring begins
