Hong Kong chamber music festival founder on why it’s mission complete ahead of final event

Premiere Performances boss Andrea Fessler opens up ahead of the 18th and final Beare’s Premiere Music Festival

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Premiere Performances founder Andrea Fessler poses at the performing arts group’s office in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. The Vancouver-raised impresario started Beare’s Premiere Music Festival “to spark an interest in chamber music” in Hong Kong. After 18 years, she says that has been accomplished. Photo: Sun Yeung

Published: 4:15pm, 9 Dec 2025

Despite having “culture junkies” for parents, Andrea Fessler could never have foreseen becoming a champion of chamber music in Hong Kong or running a festival for small ensembles that would become an important fixture in the city’s classical music calendar.

The Vancouver-raised Harvard Law School graduate and former corporate lawyer is the founder of performing arts group Premiere Performances (PPHK), which will hold the 18th and final edition of its Beare’s Premiere Music Festival, which started in 2009 as the Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival, in January.

With preparations for the event under way, the Post sat down with Fessler to discuss her unwavering mission and plans for the future.

Viola maestro Masumi Per Rostad (centre) performs with the Miro Quartet at the Beare’s Premiere Music Festival in 2024. Photo: PPHK

You set up Premiere Performances in 2007. Was there a scarcity of chamber music in Hong Kong back then?

The only [regular] presenter of chamber music in those days was the Hong Kong Arts Festival, which brought in big names like the Emerson or the Borodin quartets.

I once went to a Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra concert and saw a brilliant up-and-coming pianist called Kirill Gerstein, a last-minute replacement. I went home, Googled him, and discovered that he’d played at the Vancouver Recital Society (VRS), an organisation from my childhood founded by Leila Getz.

It then occurred to me that somebody ought to start this in Hong Kong, remembering the VRS’s impact in Vancouver, and seeing too that performances here in Hong Kong were mostly given by amateurs masquerading as professionals.

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Hong Kong chamber music festival founder on why it’s mission complete ahead of final event

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Premiere Performances boss Andrea Fessler opens up ahead of the 18th and final Beare’s Premiere Music Festival

Premiere Performances boss Andrea Fessler opens up ahead of the 18th and final Beare’s Premiere Music Festival