Dark Tales - Alice Ping Yee Ho, composer; Duo Concertante: Nancy Dahn, violin and Timothy Steeves, piano

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As I write this my street is adorned with ornamental lights, pumpkins, goblins, skeletons and gravestones in advance of Hallowe’en, so perhaps it is fitting that I begin my column with a work based on ghost stories. Alice Ping Yee Ho is one of Canada’s most prolific composers, and surely one of the most recorded, with a discography encompassing 13 CDs devoted to her songs and solo piano works, electronic dance scores, chamber music, orchestral pieces and several operas. There are also some two dozen compilations that include her compositions.  

A recent case in point is Alice Ping Yee Ho – Dark Tales, the latest from Duo Concertante (Navona Records navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6748), an evocative five-movement work inspired by Tom Dawe’s story collection An Old Man’s Winter Night. Each movement channels a ghost story rooted in Newfoundland folklore. The Newfoundland-based duo of violinist Nancy Dahn and pianist Timothy Steeves who commissioned the work is in top form here, giving each movement a distinctive colour. 

From the brash opening of the title work, through the eerie Landwash Spirits telling of shipwrecks and ghosts at sea, Sheba, in which the narrator is saved by the dog he had previously had to put down, the hauntingly beautiful Woman in the White Dress, to the concluding House in the Drook which tells of the misfortunes that befall a house built upon a “fairy ring,” the hour-long cycle captivates our imaginations. 

Originally premiered in an immersive performance with three-dimensional projections, the audio CD captures the intensity and mystery of Ho’s vision, bristling with the enchantment of the spirit world.

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