Klassik Heute – recommendation from 22.08.2019:
Artistic quality: 10 points
Sound quality: 10 points
Overall impression: 10 points
Review by Christoph Schlüren: “Sherwood’s music, however experimental his mind, is always (extended or traditional) tonal and immediately communicative. The listener participates in a process that is full of surprises that do not require any extra-musical means or shock effects, but rather arise from the natural expressive need of
an artist who is at home in the whole world and all its forms of expression and who has not lost a fraction of his childlike joy of discovery: always fresh, never one-dimensional, unfathomably musical. The performers do justice to this with immense dedication and sensitive intensity, and a finely balanced recording technique and an engaging booklet text complete the appealing, stimulating picture.”
Lyrics
West Wind
Standing alone upon the shore with the deep, darkblue sea
stretched out wide before me.
I could not wish for anything more than only to see my love again.
Blow, West Wind, blow me back my love.
Melt away my tears. Blow away my fears.
Standing alone under the sky with the bright gold yellow sun,
casting his beams in sparkling fun.
I´d never have reason to cry if only my sweetest love were here.
Blow, West Wind, blow me back my love.
Melt away my tears. Blow away my fears.
Feeling the warmth of Love´s last smile cast on the wind returning to me
From far beyond the deep blue sea will sting my heart
For all this long while until I can touch your lips again.
Blow, West Wind, blow me back my love.
Melt away ma tears. Blow away my fears.
Solitude
In the cool shadow of the Night not one single star gives me light.
In my little house hidden by ferns not even one tiny candle burns.
In this dark forest darkness rules.
My thoughts are sinking into bottomless pools.
All is empty, lost and forlorn for now even I from myself am torn.
Storm at Sea
Today as I go astumbling over the rocky wind swept crags
I hear the surf arumbling as the clouds are torn to rags.
Today the winds are ahowling in all their savage raging fury
I see the sky a scowling as if commanding me to hurry.
As the stinging salty spray scalds my cheeks like burning tears
I think of my love now far away as if the days had turned to years.
The winds are tearing my heart asunder just as cruelly as they tear the sea.
But the sea rebels with all it´s thunder while I can never set my own storm free.
I can never set my own storm free.
And more...
Gordon Sherwood wrote the Five Love Songs op. 24 in Rome in the spring of 1967. Here he had completed his music studies with Goffredo Petrassi at the Academia di Santa Cecilia, having been a pupil of Philipp Jarnach in Hamburg (and having previously taken lessons with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood). The influences of both European music educators make themselves felt in these five love songs. But there is almost no mention of successful love here, the lyrics (written by Gordon Sherwood himself) are passionate, but they speak more of heartbreak than happiness. An expressive, supercooled mood full of pleading longing characterises “West Wind” in B minor, the “black key” (as Beethoven called it). Frequent changes of tempo and an atonal fracture determine the almost even more sombre “Solitude”, where loneliness reigns without hope. “Storm at Sea” (A minor) depicts an agitated seascape that has its counterpart in the personal landscape of the soul. Horror and fog reign in “Ghost Ship”, which impressively exudes despair with the abrupt changes of metre and the again atonal arrangement. And then suddenly joy breaks into this darkness. With “In ev’ry song there is a dance” in the adequate F major, life has us again.
Gordon Sherwood – The Complete Songs, Vol. I
The first CD of the premiere release of the complete song oeuvre (music & lyrics) of Gordon Sherwood.
From the booklet: “Gordon Sherwood’s oeuvre comprises 143 works in all genres, from the large symphonic and concertante formats to chamber music works and miniatures for solo instruments. His multifaceted oeuvre – and this applies to both genres and style – also includes works for the piano, documented by Sonus Eterna through the edition of his complete pianistic works. What they all have in common is Gordon Sherwood’s irrepressible pleasure in mixing all the stylistic elements he has encountered on his extensive study trips: oriental, Asian, North American and European influences: From these, he playfully creates his very own and idiosyncratic musical cosmos. In this universe, the songs shine especially brightly. Gordon Sherwood has composed twenty groups and several individual works, mostly on his own texts. None of these songs have been published yet. He was probably inspired to write this genre by his then wife Ruth, a German singer. Together with Felicitas Breest, Masha Dimitrieva initiates with this CD the project of making Gordon Sherwood’s song oeuvre accessible on record for the first time. The Vol. I unites four groups of works that were created at different times and – it should always be said with Sherwood – in different places. (Dr. Ulrich Kahmann)