The Hong Kong Philharmonic Society Announces Newly-Elected Chairman

Download HERE

[4 November 2015, Hong Kong] The Hong Kong Philharmonic Society Limited (HK Phil) announces today that Mr Y. S. Liu, MH has been elected the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the HK Phil. He succeeds Mr Jack So Chak Kwong, GBS, OBE, JP who was elected by the Board as Vice Chairman, together with Mrs Janice Choi, MH.

"It is my great honour and pleasure to be elected again as Chairman of the HK Phil, which I have been closely connected with since the 60’s,” said Mr Y. S. Liu. “Apart from leading the Society in its mission to achieve artistic excellence and continue to bring distinctive performances to Hong Kong, we also strive to contribute to the grooming of local artistic talents, and to promote industry development.”

“We are honoured to have Mr Y. S. Liu as our Chairman once again, to lead the society in another excellent year full of exciting programmes such as the upcoming Beethoven Cycle conducted by Jaap van Zweden and the second part of The Ring Cycle, Die Walküre,” said HK Phil Chief Executive Michael MacLeod.

While welcoming Mr Liu on board, the Board of Governors and Mr MacLeod also thanked Jack So for his contributions to the society in the past year. “Mr Jack So shared many of the great and important events with the HK Phil last year, including the performance and recording of Das Rheingold, and a tour to Europe’s greatest cities, taking the orchestra to further new heights.”

The Board also welcomed Mr Nicholas Sallnow-Smith as a new member of the Board of Governors.

[Bio of Mr Y. S. Liu]

 

Click the thumbnail to download photos

Mr Y. S. Liu, MH

Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra
Music Director: Jaap van Zweden

The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (HK Phil) has recently returned from an extremely successful five-country, seven-city tour of Europe, with concerts in London, Vienna, Zurich, Eindhoven, Birmingham, Berlin and Amsterdam. Most concerts were sold out, there were standing ovations, and the reviews were universally positive. The concert in Vienna’s Musikverein was filmed for broadcast on TV. With a history stretching back to 1895, when it was formed as the Sino-British Orchestra, the HK Phil was re-named in 1957 and became fully professional in 1974.

Thanks to significant subsidy from the Hong Kong Government and long-term funding from Principal Patron Swire, the Hong Kong Jockey Club and other supporters, the HK Phil now boasts a full-time annual schedule of classical music concerts, pops concerts, an extensive education programme, and collaborations for staged opera with Opera Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

Conductors and soloists who have recently performed with the orchestra include Vladimir Ashkenazy, Ning Feng, Matthias Goerne, Lang Lang, Yu Long, Yundi Li, the late Lorin Maazel, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Yuja Wang and Edo de Waart, the HK Phil’s previous Music Director.

The HK Phil promotes the work of Hong Kong and Chinese composers through an active commissioning programme, and has released recordings featuring Tan Dun and Bright Sheng, each conducting their own compositions, on the Naxos label. Its acclaimed community engagement programme brings music to ten of thousands of children annually. A recording was issued free to schoolchildren throughout Hong Kong of Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Leopold Mozart’s Toy Symphony.

This season is Jaap van Zweden’s fourth as Music Director of the HK Phil. With him, the orchestra is undertaking major expansion and new projects, including the first-ever performances by a Hong Kong or mainland Chinese orchestra of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung. The four operas are being performed, one a year, in concert and recorded live for the Naxos label.

The Swire Group has been the Principal Patron of the HK Phil since 2006. Through this sponsorship, which is the largest in the orchestra’s history, Swire also endeavours to promote artistic excellence, foster access to classical music and stimulate cultural participation in Hong Kong, and to enhance Hong Kong’s reputation as one of the great cities of the world.

The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra is financially supported by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
SWIRE is the Principal Patron of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra
The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra is a Venue Partner of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre

 

# # #