Variants is dedicated to violinist and composer Mari Kimura, who created the piece at the 1994 Helsinki Festival.

The piece takes advantage of Mari Kimura's extraordinary skills, in particular the extension of the pitch range which she pioneered : thus sounds lower than the G of the G string can be heard toward the beginning. Producing such sounds demands an extremely precise control.

The title refers to the transformations of violin sounds produced in real-time by digital processing, but also to certain processes of variations within the violin part. For instance the timing intervals of melodic groups, causing so-called stram segregation, are echoed as mere rhythms. Digital transpositions, echoes and reverberation build up a contrapuntal and harmonic fabric which extends the violin melodies.