The title for the 12 Ensemble’s disc may be taken from Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen, with which it ends, but the idea of transformation connects all four pieces here. The Strauss, and Claude Vivier’s Zipangu – in which a single melody is refracted through a succession of different timbres and harmonic colours – provide the substance. Utterly different they may be, but both are superbly played (without a conductor), though some might prefer a more sumptuous string sound for Strauss’s gloriously elegiac score.
The other works are much slighter. Edmund Finnis’s Hymn (after Byrd), which began life as the final movement of his first string quartet, takes the Elizabethan composer’s plainchant setting Christe Qui Lux es et Dies as the starting point for a musical dialogue across four centuries, while Oliver Leith’s Non Voglio Mai Vedere Il Sole Tramontare started out as the pastiche verismo aria that is a focal point in Leith’s 2022 opera Last Days. Here the vocal line transfers very effectively to a solo violin and fits beautifully into this teasingly diverse collection.
