In 1990, guitarist Marco Minà met Hans Werner Henze, which was no easy feat, even though they lived very close. Minà had studied guitar at the "G. Verdi" Conservatory in Milan and was completing his studies in aesthetics and music history at the "La Sapienza" University in Rome. At that time he was preparing his master's thesis on the "Royal Winter Music", which he had already performed several times. He played the piece to the composer and already at that time had wondered about some "foreign bodies" in the published score. This first meeting was followed by many others, both at Villa La Leprara, Henze's residence in Marino, and in London, where Henze heard, among other things, the 2nd Sonata in Minà's interpretation at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Several times the guitarist was also invited by Henze for concerts at La Leprara.

Like other colleagues before him, Minà visited the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel when planning the recording to study the autograph of the "Royal Winter Music". The intended one-day study turned into a full week of intense work, as sensational discoveries were made while looking through the manuscript, including the substitution of the third and fourth movements, "Ariel" and "Ophelia," in the 1st Sonata. This was followed by the discovery of over 300 other changes that Julian Bream and Reinbert Evers had made to the autograph, some of which affected the atmosphere of the music and the character of the Shakespearean characters portrayed. These were thus serious interventions in the dramaturgical and narrative architecture of Henze's music. The notes were often changed in such a way that the original musical structure was in part no longer recognizable.