Scott Ordway: Girl in the Snow
Acis

Performed by Canadian mezzo-soprano Julia Dawson and pianist Anna Naretto, Scott Ordway's magnificent song-cycle Girl in the Snow could have been arranged for a chamber ensemble or mini-orchestra. Yet while it's easy to imagine the work presented in a more expansive form, it in no way suffers for being performed by two musicians only. The argument could even be made that in limiting the arrangement to Dawson and Naretto, Ordway's work benefits. If anything, this premiere recording is all the more riveting when the work is presented in its purest form.

For the forty-minute setting, the California-born Ordway (b. 1984) combines his own evocative poetry with ancient texts by philosopher St. Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-430) from the Confessions. Girl in the Snow is structured in three sections, each of which ends with an Augustine-derived “Memory Play.” Dawson gives moving voice to a woman near the end of her life who, in reading about the philosopher's spiritual struggles and his meditations on time and memory, undertakes a solitary inward journey of her own.

Reflecting on her early life and how it helped shape her experience of the world, she envisions an imaginary forest through which she wanders and relives encounters with animals (fox, owl, rabbit), trees, sky, rivers, and the sea. Venturing inward, she remembers the affection her mother showed her when she was an infant. Moving to the spiritual, she ponders the mysteries of the world, as well as questions about existence and cosmology. As the cycle nears its end, she leaves her imagined forest and returns to the present to confront her imminent demise with grace, wisdom, and humility: “Everything is always ending. Only children remember heaven: The vast stillness, and the emptiness of time.”

Richly melodic, Girl in the Snow encompasses a variety of moods as it advances through its eleven parts, from radiant joy to plaintive melancholy. A rather Narnia-like wonder infuses the nature-based sections in a way that intensifies the work's already magical aura, and Ordway smartly fashions the musical character of each part to complement the text content. Though Girl in the Snow should be presented in its entirety, parts such as the joyful “The Rabbit, Warm in her Burrow” and sublime “The Mystery of the World” would be perfect encore choices for a vocal-and-piano recital.

The rendering of Ordway's lyrical, resonant score by Naretto and Dawson is exquisite in the extreme. Her singing is expressive but not overwrought, controlled yet emotional, and Naretto provides exceptional accompaniment in sensitively tailoring her playing to the vocalist. Not only does the reduced presentation speak to our current period of isolation, so too does the idea of a person using imagination to reflect on memory, the human condition, the wondrous gift of life, and one's place in the universe. Poignant, humanistic, and thought-provoking, Girl in the Snow is an accomplishment of high order.

March 2021