On Thursday the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra was named 2019 Orchestra of the Year in the annual Gramophone Classical Music Awards. 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 2016 Van Zweden’s contract is extended until 2022, as he is named music director-designate of the New York Philharmonic 2019 The orchestra becomes the first in Asia to be nominated and to win Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year accolade