The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra is one of Asia's top Western-style performing ensembles. The group's large recording catalog is balanced between Western and Asian repertory. While amateur orchestral ensembles existed in British Hong Kong as far back as 1895, they came and went, and their concerts were sporadic. The direct ancestor of the present Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra was the Sino-British Orchestra, formed in 1947 as an offshoot of the larger Sino-British Club social group. The group took the name Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in 1957, but it remained a chamber-sized group with about 27 musicians. Lim Kektjiang transformed the Philharmonic into a professional group. Since 2012, Jaap van Zweden has been the music director. In 2023, the Hong Kong Philharmonic released a recording of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 and Symphony No. 9, with van Zweden conducting.