Royal Winter Music I

Henze's first sonata on Shakespeare's characters. Gloucester, Romeo and Juliet, Ariel, Ophelia, Touchstone, Audrey and William appear one after the other, "through the sound of the guitar as through a theater curtain. With their masks, their voices and gestures, they speak to us of great passions, of tenderness, sadness, comedy, strange things in people's lives. The whispering voices of the spirits mingle with this, and at the end Oberon speaks, pacified and reconciled, as if nature had submitted to mankind" (Hans Werner Henze 1976).

In addition to Henze's guitar sonata, the CD contains works by Magnus Lindberg and Toru Takemitsu.