He was never an avant-gardist, due to his solidly conventional musical upbringing, and it shows in his music's adherence to structure and tonality. His idiom can be said to be fairly neo-classical, with echoes of Bart k, Hindemith and Stravinsky. Unlike the variation form, the metamorphosis aims at a particular goal. It must reach completion in one way or another. Either death or eternal life, if I may put it like that.
Variations alter and eventually turn around and end up where they started again.
In a metamorphosis, like in sonata form, it must all lead somewhere. But I cannot accept that one is not allowed to repeat oneself, so I try to do so. This must naturally come from the material itself - it is to extend the repetition. Quoted from CD notes. The present disc compiles four different orchestral works defined under the collective heading 'Symphonic Metamorphoses', and were written between 1954 and 1972.