Alice Ping Yee Ho & Christina Petrowska Quilico: The Imagined
Navona Records

A better match between performer and composer would be difficult to conceive than the one involving Christina Petrowska Quilico and Alice Ping Yee Ho. Quilico's piano artistry has distinguished more than sixty albums and countless solo recitals and concerto performances. In recognition of her extraordinary career, she's been appointed to the Order of Canada, Order of Ontario, and the Royal Society of Canada. A pianist of her exceptional gifts is needed to perform the music written by Ho, a Chinese-Canadian composer who has over many years produced a remarkably diverse and expressive body of work. She's created material for orchestras, chamber ensembles, choral and theatre groups, and opera companies, and is as comfortable writing for solo piano as electroacoustic ensemble. The four solo piano works on her latest collaboration with Quilico, The Imagined, present a solid account of her musical style and sensibility, but a fuller appreciation would include exposure to her other recordings, such as her chamber opera Chinatown (Leaf Music, 2023) or Duo Concertante's Dark Tales (Navona Records, 2025).

Traces of Ho's Chinese heritage sometimes emerge in her music, but it's otherwise rooted in the Western contemporary classical tradition. In contrast to some contemporary composers whose works use clearly delineated systems-based structures as scaffolding, Ho's compositions develop organically with one idea building upon another. A given piece advances with a discernible logic yet is never predictable; hindsight brings heightened clarity to the manner of its unfolding. Writing for solo piano, the fertility of her imagination is unbounded, even when guidelines for a particular work impart a road map of sorts. As is often the case for Ho, a commission provides a helpful guide but one that little restricts her creativity. Recorded in October 2025 at Toronto's Imagine Sound Studio, Quilico's performances are captured with pristine clarity by session producer David Jaeger.

Riffing cheekily off the title of Mussorgsky's iconic work, Ho's Pictures from An Imagined Exhibition (2025) is her four-part response to the paintings of both Hong Kong ink master Wesley Tongson and Quilico, not only an incredible pianist but a visual artist too (the painting on the cover of The Imagined is by her). Commissioned by the pianist, the work progresses through four tone poem-styled parts, two referencing the physicality of visual art and others extra-musical phenomena. Showers of piano patterns evoke gliding brush movements during “Free Strokes,” which in Quilico's hands becomes a transporting flight-of-fancy. Her virtuosic command is clearly called upon for the ascending and descending patterns that ripple and flow throughout the movement. Tension dramatically intensifies during the chromatic shifts that escalate within “Distant Drums,” with the intimation of an advancing threat communicated vividly through Ho's agitated music. Whereas an epic scenescape is conjured through the meditative ruminations that course through “Mystical Mountains,” the radiant “Dancing Colours” is naturally breezier in its playful intertwining of right- and left-hand patterns.

Originating out of the surreal imagery of Ho's opera-in-progress The Labyrinth of Tears is A Manic Ride Through Lollipop Hell (2024). Liner notes clarify that the work's narrative “follows five wizardry schoolgirls who enter the inner world of a friend trapped in a mysterious coma, navigating dangers and solving puzzles in a labyrinthine landscape of the mind.” At the outset of “The Labyrinth,” cascades of notes suggest the plunging of the five into a fantastical realm, with moments of levity added via whimsical phrases and off-kilter rhythms and the music even at one point taking a bluesy turn. The gentler, introspective side of Ho's music finds its outlet in the central movement, “A Sad Lullaby”; “The Great Escape” just as naturally resolves the work with action-packed dramatics.

Distancing itself from the other pieces through its incorporation of electronics and drawing for inspiration from an imagined folktale, The Chinese Nightingale (2022) traces the titular creature's journey through time, from Silk Road adventures to the cataclysms of modern times. Crackling and sizzling with electricity, the eleven-minute piece advances through multiple episodes, some delicate and others harsh, a veritable adventure in sound. Synthesizer-like washes and glissandos provide a mutating backdrop to the spidery piano, with electronic textures in moments alluding to ancient instruments like a pipa and zither. Concluding the release on an explicitly personal note, Ho's memories of ‘70s Hong Kong are revisited through the three-part Hong Kong Nostalgia (2023). Her evocation of what was at the time one of the city's tallest skyscrapers, “Connaught Mansion” exudes a jazzy rhythmic vitality, the memory, as intimated by the music's tone, fond but also perhaps bittersweet. To create “Temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas,” she recalled her childhood visit to the temple in Shatin and translated that into music of quiet grandeur and prayerful mysticism. In being a portrait of Hong Kong's lively night-time bazaars, “Night Markets” is as animated and wide-eyed as one would anticipate.

May 2026