Scott Ordway: Nineteen Movements for Unaccompanied Cello
Acis

Composer Scott Ordway (b. 1984) made an auspicious recording debut with the Acis release of his song cycle Girl in the Snow (2018), which Canadian mezzo-soprano Julia Dawson and pianist Anna Naretto brought to magnificent realization last year. As performed by Canadian cellist Arlen Hlusko, the world premiere recording of Ordway's follow-up, Nineteen Movements for Unaccompanied Cello (2017-18), is as formidable an accomplishment. This forty-eight-minute suite is a magnificent addition to the contemporary repertoire that should have cellists salivating at the prospect of taking it on.

Hlusko doesn't so much play the piece as inhabit it, and Ordway is lucky to have partnered with someone so fully invested as a collaborator (she, in fact, commissioned the work in 2017 and presented its world premiere a year later at the Chestnut Hill Skyspace in Philadelphia). This recently appointed member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars presents what would appear to be a definitive performance of the work, though her recording shouldn't deter other cellists from creating their own interpretations. To describe her rendering virtuosic hardly does justice to the achievement. Even a single listen to the recording makes clear that Hlusko brought to every detail, marking, and note the utmost care.

It was, in fact, a collaboration in the truest sense. Yes, Ordway's rightfully credited as the composer, yet the two worked together on the piece over a multi-year period, from developing it through intensive working sessions to the recording sessions proper; in Hlusko's own words, “Every single measure of this piece was a conversation.” That connectedness even extends to the release package, which features photographs by both Ordway and Hlusko. Such images dovetail with one of his inspirations for the project, his love for landscape, nature, and the outdoors.

Ordway's familiarity with the cello's unique catalogue of sound possibilities is explored intensely over the course of the nineteen parts. The work poses a challenge to even someone playing at Hlusko's advanced level of technique, but it also demands from its interpreter incredible emotional expression. Performed live, the piece requires maximum concentration and energy, especially when its length exceeds most in the cello repertoire.

He approached the work's design architecturally in the design and sequencing of its movements. While there are hushed, contemplative movements, there are also aggressive, torrential ones. Lending structural coherence to the piece, most parts correspond to a “twin” later in the piece that treats the same musical material in a slightly different way—pizzicatto in the first movement becomes bowed in the last, a subdued section changes into reckless abandon, and so on. Most movements are concise statements, with only two of the nineteen extending into the four- and five-minute range, and as a result contrasts are abundant.

There is also a clear formal design. As Ordway explains in liner notes, each movement reflects on one of four “images” relating to the themes of solitude and wilderness: “walking, singing, wind, and waves.” Executed with a gentle lilt and structured as a series of ascending four-note figures, the opening movement lives up to its “walking” billing, as do the “singing” ninth and fourteenth, and the monumental tenth, which positioned at the work's centre, effectively evokes the insistent to-and-fro of “waves.” Not every part, however, establishes a one-to-one equivalency between assigned “image” and musical character; some, for example, more allude to the “image” by way of mood rather than direct gesture.

July 2021