Ensemble Allegria presents here a combination of works as an invitation to enjoyment as well as reflection.  We are offered variations, metamorphoses and fragments, three different artistic working concepts.

Variation and metamorphosis are similar artistic tools inasmuch as the material to be used is workable and encourages modification. At the same time, the basic material is recognisable or, in any case, reconstructible.

Of course in the works heard here the motif of transformation is intended. And whereas musical variations – as with Benjamin Britten – typically retain a theme's form and length more or less unaltered, a metamorphosis – as Richard Strauss calls his work – can by contrast pertain to everything from the shortest motifs to entire movements. Lars Petter Hagen's Strauss Fragments were commissioned by Ensemble Allegria.

All three composers on this CD stand in debt to an older colleague. Britten had a close association with his teacher Frank Bridge and reveals this through his variations. Strauss explicitly cites Ludwig van Beethoven's Third Symphony in his Metamorphosen, and Hagen's composition is based on this latter work. Composing on the basis of music one does not hold in high regard often results in a caricature. This is by no means the case here.