When he delivered his Deuxième Grande Sonate op. 25 to the publishers, Fernando Sor was a mature musician aged almost fifty, with an outstanding musical career behind him. At the end of the 1820s, the stylistic canons of music had, already for some time, begun to change, giving way to new forms of artistic expression. The most important and prestigious models of Viennese classicism that had always been a point of reference for Sor had become absorbed into the glorious past of the Enlightenment. Not only this: his travels in Europe had allowed him to become acquainted with the most fashionable musicians of the time and, with them, the new musical trends that were sweeping through the Old Continent like a wave. The most influential name, the true and unanimously acclaimed star of the 1810s and ’20s, was Beethoven, who was then in the period of transition between his second and third style, in other words the most intensely romantic and formally complex phase of his career. And it was impossible for an attentive composer like Sor, who had heard his works in Paris and London, not to be struck by the work of the genius from Bonn. On this release, Sor’s works are performed by Stefano Grondona. Born in Genoa on 21st July 1958, Stefano Grondona distinguished himself very early as winner of the most prestigious international competitions, to the point that Andrés Segovia, in an interview from 1985, mentioned him as one of his four most significant pupils. John Williams, Oscar Ghiglia and Alirio Díaz, artists then at the height of their artistic maturity, were the others named by the Maestro. Grondona, who in 2014 celebrates the fortieth year of his concert career, has contributed with his interpretative and historical research to an innovative vision which is absolutely personal and also archetypal of the guitar.