Hans Werner Henze. Royal Winter Music. Two Sonatas on Shakespearean Characters marks animportant stage in Stefano Grondona's recording career: after years of sustained engagement with itand public performances (roughly from 1982 to 1995), the musician returns to confront this pivotalwork of twentieth-century guitar repertoire. At the same time, in the manner and outcomes of thistraversal, the record bears witness to an oblique and little-trodden modality of approachingcompositions that, like this one, embody peculiarities and contradictions of the more cultured guitarrepertoire.The physiognomy of this work, as Marek Orszulik argued (Aspects of the Historical Development ofRepertoire for the Guitar. A Case Study of Hans Werner Henze's Royal Winter Music, Sonatas onShakespearean Characters, University of Alberta, 2016), reconciles the sonata, understood as a genreof large-scale form and monumental architecture, with the Character Piece, a rhapsodic, dramatic,and psychological composition. In the introductions to the printed editions published by Schott,Henze makes clear that, through the Royal Winter Music cycle, he intended to engage with a seriesof key characters from Shakespearean theatre (to whom the different movements of the sonatas arededicated), who appear and disappear through the guitar's sonic textures.