It's been a long, rocky road. Fessler took the initial risk of engaging a series of rising-star solo pianists in 2007 with little certainty of being able to attract an audience. "I don't think I fully appreciated how difficult it was to sell tickets for concerts given by young unknown artists playing in Hong Kong mid-week," she says. "The fact is that people are exceptionally busy and it's challenging to bring them into a concert hall to listen to someone they've never heard of."

Undeterred, and seemingly a glutton for difficult challenges, she pushed the throttle further by setting up the annual Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival two years later. She now flies in teams of musicians from all over the world to join local artists for formal concerts and outreach programmes that are spread over several days.

Its fourth edition will take place in January 2013 with violinist Jimmy Lin Cho-liang as artistic director; the inaugural festival had cellist Trey Lee Chui-yee in the chair.

"When Trey and I were planning the 2009 festival," Fessler recalls, "we were warned by a lot of people that nobody was interested in chamber music here, so don't waste your time. But we persevered and launched the festival with great success. Suddenly everyone was saying: that's exactly what Hong Kong needs."

So was it just a happy coincidence, or was there a gratifying whiff of follow-my-leader when chamber music subsequently found favour with other arts groups in the city? The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra added it to its season repertoire, says Fessler, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta launched its free Good Music at Lunchtime chamber music series; broadcaster RTHK formed its own string quartet; "and the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts [APA] finally got chamber music into the mandatory curriculum of music students".

Fessler encountered early on the difficulty of matching willing sponsors with suitable venues, and it is still her greatest obstacle. She acknowledges that there are plenty of good performance spaces in Hong Kong, including in the New Territories, "but unfortunately the luxury goods companies and the big multinationals and the financial institutions are not really interested in sponsoring concerts out in Tsuen Wan and Yuen Long".

Of the more central venues, the Hong Kong Cultural Centre's halls don't lend themselves to chamber music, which leaves her with City Hall and the APA as her only options. The problems don't stop there. "It's exceptionally difficult to be allocated a space at City Hall, so I've had to turn away numerous possibilities to present fantastic artists because I was simply not allocated the dates that were possible for them [to perform]."

Ping-ponging between the APA and City Hall is a snip in terms of distance, but a nightmare when it comes to promotion and box office arrangements. "The ticketing services … are complicated," Fessler says. "It's mandatory to use Urbtix when you have a concert in a Leisure and Cultural Services Department venue [like City Hall], and it's mandatory to use Hong Kong Ticketing if you use the APA" - meaning people supporting the chamber music festival can't be given a discount or a pass when the concerts are divided between the two agencies. Leaflet distribution is bound by a similar exclusivity.

With frustrations such as these, running the PPHK almost single-handedly for five years took its toll last year, bringing an urgent needj for a fairy godmother to help grease the wheels.

The announcement in February that Fessler's bid for a Springboard Grant from the Home Affairs Bureau had been successful did the trick, bringing the promise to match any sponsorship money she raises by two-to-one. Fessler is confident she can secure HK$1.5 million, which will be enhanced by a further HK$3 million from the government, the maximum allowable under the scheme. This will enable her to run the 2013 festival from a properly resourced office at last.

What if that bid had failed?

"Honestly, I don't know," the 43-year-old Canadian says. "I try not to think about it. There was a moment before [this year's] festival when I was so overwhelmed by the amount of work: there were 25 artists and 25 events over 10 days. It was more than double the size of the 2010 festival and I remember thinking to myself: if I don't get the Springboard Grant, I simply can't do this again; it's too big for me."

But dark moments such as these are airbrushed when Fessler recalls the successful performances in her annual recital series. Big names have delivered on their reputations: cellist Steven Isserlis, guitarist Milos Karadaglic, violinists Nicola Benedetti, Ning Feng and Christian Tetzlaff, plus pianists Stephen Hough, Wang Yuja and Kirill Gerstein are some of the musicians who are now part of the annals.

The present season ends on Thursday with a recital by Ukrainian violist Maxim Rysanov; while artists in the 2013 season include violinist Alina Ibragimova, the Brooklyn Rider String Quartet, and pianists Alessio Bax, Lucille Chung, Freddy Kempf and Cedric Tiberghien.

The quality of the performances is a source of energy for Fessler; audience feedback is another - she gets many messages after each concert thanking her for arranging the events. After a piano recital by Javier Perianes in April, an appreciative music lover sent in a cheque for HK$10,000.

"Letters and e-mails have definitely kept me going at times when I've been beating my head against the wall, wondering if it's all worth it," the mother of three says.

There's little time for soul-searching, however, with the next major development of setting up a schools programme already sitting on her desk. In order to get this off to an assured start, Fessler has enlisted the expertise of Australia's Musica Viva for a pilot project this autumn. Established in 1945, Musica Viva is the world's largest chamber music organisation with an education programme that reaches 300,000 students each year.

With that sort of experience on tap, Fessler is confident an equally healthy foundation for the future of chamber music will soon be underpinning Hong Kong's schools.

Does she rue abandoning her career in law to develop PPHK?

"No," she shoots back. "I just have a new career. I have absolutely no regrets about that.

"I'm far more engaged and stimulated and passionate about what I'm doing now than I ever was as a lawyer."