I have just come from the Three Choirs Festival concert called “The Planets,” in which Gustav Holst’s suite of seven tone-poems was on the second half of the program. It is one of my favorite works, and even though I have heard the work live on several occasions, this is one performance that I will never forget.

The orchestra was guest-conducted by Elim Chan, a native of Hong Kong, and small in stature but enormous in her ability to command the large orchestra. I was absolutely mesmerized by her conducting gestures, which at times made her soar like an eagle, and other times she exerted so much energy that I thought surely she would nearly explode. What was obvious was that she had the orchestra in the palm of her hand—every gesture was important.

She became the first female winner of the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition in 2014 and became the assistant conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra in 2015/2016. She was then appointed to the Gustavo Dudamel fellowship program with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2016/2017. She will return to the London Symphony Orchestra this coming season in addition to guest conducting an orchestra in Mexico.

In a November 17, 2016 article in The Guardian, Chan was quoted as saying, “I wanted to make magic.”

The seed was planted when I first went to a classical concert in Hong Kong, where I grew up. I was in primary school and was taken to an educational concert with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. The conductor explained we were going to hear Holst’s Planets and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and talked briefly about the works. I was fascinated by this figure – everything happened when he started waving his hands. It seemed to me like magic. Just like the sorcerer’s apprentice in Disney’s Fantasia, everyone was under his spell and followed his magic wand. I thought: “I want to make magic like that person.”

And magic tonight she made.

Conductor Chan pushed the tempo ever so slightly so that I was on the edge of my seat for the entire work! In the cathedral acoustics, the brass and percussion just exploded and chills ran up and down my spine on numerous occasions.

The off-stage voices in the last movement was an extraordinary moment, because in the reverberant acoustics, the pure voices seemed to float over our heads. I wondered if there was a gallery where the young singers from the Gloucester and Worcester Cathedrals, members of the Three Choirs Festival Youth Choir and the Academia Musica were standing—the ethereal sound just wafted over us in continuous waves. The singers moved ever and ever farther away, fading away into the distance like I’ve never heard before, and unfortunately the magic was broken when someone started to clap prematurely before the sound had finally died away.

When I’ve heard this piece in a concert stage situation, there is no way they could achieve this fadeaway effect due to limitations of concert halls. But in Hereford Cathedral tonight, this was pure magic. It was a pity that it was slightly spoiled.

Earlier in the evening, I attended a reception for the American Friends of the Three Choirs Festival where it was announced that we had raised £10,000 in support of tonight’s concert. A brochure about the Friends says, “The music brought me here, but the people keep me coming back.”

How true that is. Tonight I sat next to a man at Evensong, and then we found ourselves in (assigned) seats next to one another at the concert. We were wondering what the odds were of that! About one in a thousand?!

This afternoon I also went on a walking tour of Hereford and recognized a couple I had seen on the tour only a couple of rows from my seat. We spoke, and I found out that their son is the assistant organist at Worcester Cathedral and was in tonight’s concert. The woman remarked that she had sat next to a woman at Evensong whom she met at last year’s festival, and somehow they recognized each other. I also spoke to a man tonight who said this was his 49th Three Choirs Festival—absolutely astounding!

It’s these type of conversations with audience members that make the Three Choirs Festival so special.