Elim Chan, acclaimed Hong Kong-born conductor, returns home
She’s conducted cars for Porsche and led the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra – now she’s returned home for her first post-Covid concert
The query came from Porsche, which, realising its annual motor show was obviously not going to happen as a live event, wanted Chan to help make a video to promote it.
At first she was sceptical, and almost said no to what seemed like a gimmick. But her interest was piqued when it transpired that there were parallels between her work and that of car engineers and designers.
“You have a model like the 911 or the Taycan and each year they launch a new version,” says Chan. “But how can you take the same thing and keep making it again and again and make it different each time?
“And I realised that’s actually very similar to my job. I take the same symphony each time and then each concert I have to somehow bring a different perspective or maybe just be persistent, to keep the level high.”
A short time later, Chan – who then, as now, lived in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, and was the chief conductor of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra – was driven out to a warehouse in Belgium.
Standing on a specially constructed podium, in front of half a dozen gleaming new cars, parked up in a neat half circle, she conducted them. Or rather she conducted a video camera on the end of a delicate robotic arm, “and it was like the camera picked up on my movements, even my emotions, and went around the cars and then went through the windows and looked inside”.
