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There are, of course, composers who are also world class instrumentalists and vice versa. But in the storied tradition of classical piano, there are meaningful creative relationships formed when a composer writes specifically for a particular performer, or (such as with Hewitt and Bach, Lipatti with Mozart, or Rubenstein with Chopin) when a pianist becomes associated with the work of a particular composer, their recordings dubbed seminal and definitive. I am not sure what will come of the musical relationship between the Hong Kong-born Canadian composer Alice Ping Yee Ho and renowned pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico—who brings tremendous expressivity and nuance to each of Ho’s four terrific compositions here—but it has been a great one so far.

`Released in 2026 on Navona Records, The Imagined is a shortening of Ho’s four-part evocative composition Pictures from An Imagined Exhibition which draws inspiration from the paintings of both the late Hong Kong-based artist Wesley Tongson and, believe it or not, Petrowska Quilico herself, who is also an accomplished artist (for reference, she painted the album’s cover). Attempting to highlight the differences seen in these artistic approaches (the album’s notes point to contrasting Eastern and Western aesthetics), Ho and Petrowska Quilico effectively co-create an intricate musical landscape of geographic and artistic cross-pollination, which they mine effectively over this beautiful album’s first 18 or so minutes.

Recorded last year at Imagine Sound Studio in Toronto, the sonic capture of Petrowska Quilico’s piano is rich and clean, enabling revelatory further elegances to be appreciated in both the playing, and in Ho’s compositional work.

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