Stefano Grondona - Henze: Royal Winter Music (2026) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist

01. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 1: Ritornello (1)
02. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 1: I. Gloucester
03. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 1: Ritornello (2)
04. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 1: II. Romeo and Juliet
05. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 1: Ritornello (3)
06. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 1: III. Ariel
07. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 1: Ritornello (4)
08. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 1: IV. Ophelia
09. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 1: Ritornello (5)
10. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 1: V. Touchstone Audrey and William
11. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 1: Ritornello (6)
12. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 1: VI. Oberon
13. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 1: Ritornello (7)
14. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 2: I. Sir Andrew Aguecheek
15. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 2: II. Bottom's Dream
16. Royal Winter Music: Guitar Sonata No. 2: III. Mad Lady Macbeth

Hans Werner Henze. Royal Winter Music. Two Sonatas on Shakespearean Characters marks an important stage in Stefano Grondona’s recording career: after years of sustained engagement with it and public performances (roughly from 1982 to 1995), the musician returns to confront this pivotal work of twentieth-century guitar repertoire. At the same time, in the manner and outcomes of this traversal, the record bears witness to an oblique and little-trodden modality of approaching compositions that, like this one, embody peculiarities and contradictions of the more cultured guitar repertoire.

A Case Study of Hans Werner Henze’s Royal Winter Music, Sonatas on Shakespearean Characters, University of Alberta, 2016), reconciles the sonata, understood as a genre of 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 series of key characters from Shakespearean theatre (to whom the different movements of the sonatas are dedicated), who appear and disappear through the guitar’s sonic textures.