For young ‘rock star’ conductors from Hong Kong and Macau, the world is their stage

Conducting is a competitive profession. “In a large symphony orchestra you can have 90 or even 100 musicians but there can be only one conductor,” says Hong Kong Sinfonietta music director Yip Wing-sie, who has been wielding the baton for more than three decades.

While opportunities for aspiring conductors have grown – thanks to a prolif­era­tion of chamber ensembles (especially in Europe), music festivals, conducting courses, master­classes and competitions (the Sinfonietta held its own for the first time last January) – the number of musicians jostling for the few top orchestral positions worldwide has risen, too.

“The pool of young conductors in my generation wasn’t as big as what we have now,” says the 58-year-old Yip. “Things are much more com­peti­tive today.”

It is from this group that three locally born musicians have emerged in the past five years to lead some of the world’s most renowned orchestras. Elim Chan, Lio Kuok-man and Wilson Ng Wai-sai are quietly but surely making their mark on the global classical music scene.

Elim Chan

A conductor’s task is to lead an orchestra. But when Chan stood in front of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO), in Edinburgh, in November, she was the spirit of the orchestra embodied – the notes and natures of the musicians and their instruments manifest in her and dancing before us.